by Gary Parker
“Will you think about it?”
He twirled his mustache.
Tess spoke for him. “He’ll think about it.”
*****
Stepping back to let Wilt Carver enter his office, Luke Tyler studied the man. Handsome if you liked the real polished kind of guy. Not much taller than a broomstick, but he seemed taller because he carried himself with such a confident air. Black hair peppered at his temples with gray. Fine facial features. Thin without being skinny, brown eyebrows neatly trimmed and resting over an alert set of brown eyes. One barely noticeable scar on his left cheek, obviously the work of a good plastic surgeon, but once a major cut or scratch of some kind.
“Have a seat, sir,” said Tyler, remembering his manners. “This office isn’t much, but it works for me.”
Carver glanced around, his eyes darting, taking in everything. “It looks good, functional. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
Dropping a briefcase to the floor, he plopped down into the straight chair in front of Tyler’s desk.
Tyler took a toothpick from a box in his top drawer. He offered the box to Carver.
“What brings you slumming at my place this time of the evening?” Tyler asked.
Carver patted the side of the chair, then cleared his throat. “Well . . . you are the lead man on the Brandon situation and something has come to my attention I think you should know. I’m leaving town tomorrow and wanted to deliver it before I left.”
Tyler bit on his toothpick. He didn’t like all this attention from such powerful people. How had Carver gotten involved in this? Then he relaxed a bit. Carver had contacts in places he could only imagine. Someone had apparently come to the attorney general with some information. Nothing unusual about that.
This case had gotten play all over the state, even a bit beyond. Wild speculation about gambling and Jack Brandon’s opposition to it poured from scores of media outlets. Connie Brandon didn’t stand alone with her suspicions that the gambling industry, with its alleged ties to the Mob, had snuffed Jack Brandon to win a local election in the state capital. People all across the country were calling this election a key to the Midwest. If Jefferson City, conservative center of middle-America morality, passed gambling, then every city and town bordering the Missouri and Mississippi River became an open target. With that kind of national play, information about Brandon’s death might come from anywhere. Someone might go to the attorney general with their story. Tyler shrugged. He didn’t care. No sweat off his nose.
“I’m all ears, Mr. Carver.”
“It’s Wilt, detective. Just Wilt. Look, here’s what I’ve got.” He reached to his side, pulled up his briefcase, and opened it. Inside, he grabbed a videotape and held it up for Tyler.
Tyler reached across the desk and took the tape.
“What’s on it?”
“A bank surveillance video. Routine these days.”
Tyler nodded. “Brandon?”
“None other.”
“Local?”
“Nope. St. Louis. Opening an account.”
Tyler bit into his toothpick. “Twenty-five thousand dollars in that account?”
Wilt’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know about that. I’ve got no authority at that point. You’ll have to check that for yourself.”
Tyler nodded. “I expect I will. What’s special about the tape?” Wilt lowered his eyes. “It’s Jack,” he said. “Jack Brandon and a woman.”
Tyler cracked his toothpick, then picked it out of his mouth. Slowly, he opened the top right drawer of his desk and pulled out a blue folder. Opening the folder, he slid it over to Carver for his inspection. “Does this describe the woman?”
Carver studied the page for almost a minute. It described a blonde woman. Five feet seven inches tall. Blue eyes. One hundred fourteen pounds. As he read, he began to nod. “It sounds like the same woman,” he said. “The one in the video.”
Tyler stroked his beard. The woman, Sandra Lunsford, listed at 110 Maple Road in Columbia, Missouri, had her name registered in three hotels in Jefferson City between January 15 and April 1. Having interviewed her, Tyler knew the description in his folder didn’t do her justice. Almost forty years old, she had naturally blonde hair, eyes the color of a robin’s eggs, and a body that made men get neck cricks when she walked past. Andy Starks said she had visited the Good Books Store on at least two occasions. Once, Starks remembered, she stayed alone with Jack in the back for at least fifteen minutes.
Not wanting to stress Connie Brandon until he knew more, Tyler had asked Starks to keep this information quiet, and Starks agreed. Now, though, the truth had to come out. He hated the thought of it, but he had a job to do.
“Can I keep this video?” he asked.
Carver nodded quickly. “Sure, I brought it for you to keep. For the investigation.”
“One of us needs to tell Connie Brandon.”
“Connie already knows about the tape. But she doesn’t know the woman is on it.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “She knows about the tape?”
“Yes, fact is, she came to me and asked me to get it for her.”
“Then I assume she knows about the account also.”
“She’s the one who told me.”
Tyler leaned back and cradled his head in his hands. “She’s a remarkable woman.”
“I think so.”
Tyler raised back up. “Why are you bringing me the tape? Shouldn’t you take it to her?”
Carver sighed and lowered his eyes. When he looked up again, his eyes seemed dim, almost ashamed. “I agonized what to do when I got it,” he said. “Connie didn’t explicitly ask me to keep it from the authorities. So I had to decide. Give it to her, let her do heaven only knows what with it. Or come to you, let you find out about this woman first. Make sure it’s safe for Connie. That’s what worried me the most. I thought Connie might take this and get herself in some kind of trouble. She doesn’t need any more strain. I hoped you might handle it.”
Not sure whether to believe Carver, Tyler shrugged. What Carver said made sense. Connie had already faced enough. She didn’t need to run off half-cocked searching for Sandra Lunsford.
“One of us needs to take her the tape,” Tyler repeated.
“I’m leaving town in the morning. You want to do it?”
Tyler sighed. “Might as well. I’ve already told her a woman might be involved.”
“What will this do to the investigation?”
Tyler rubbed his beard. “Not sure. But chances are this will pull the plug on it. No reason to waste more tax dollars on a suicide.” Carver stood, his briefcase in hand. “Too bad about Jack,” he said. “I’ve known him a long time. He was a good man. Too bad he got caught up in all this.”
Tyler shook his hand, and Carver walked out. Not speaking to anyone, Tyler stepped to an office next door, closed the door, and popped the tape into a video monitor on a rectangular table in the center of the room. Flipping off the lights, he seated himself in front of the video. Using the remote from the table, he clicked on the film. It lasted just over fifteen minutes and showed Jack Brandon and Sandra Lunsford together as he opened the bank account in St. Louis.
Tyler squinted as he watched, trying to interpret the tape. On several occasions, Sandra Lunsford touched Jack’s arm or Jack steered her by the small of the back. They talked easily to each other, not laughing but talking seriously, as if they had a secret they needed to keep. More than once, she leaned in close and he did the same with her.
Watching the video, Tyler wished he had audio on it so he could hear what they said. For a moment, he thought about trying to find a lip reader but then decided he had no reason. It was all plain enough. If he had any doubts at all, the end of the video destroyed his misgivings. One picture did it, the last image on the screen. As Jack finished his transaction with the bank, he bent slightly and kissed Sandra Lunsford on the forehead. It was such an act of care that Tyler had no doubt it conveyed love.
; Rewinding the tape, Tyler sat still, his hands locked behind his head. He hated the times when he found out bad things about normally good people. It happened far too often for his tastes. A simple, small-town man or woman, moving through life like everyone else, slipping through the stream as easily and naturally as a trout in a river. But then something happens. The man turns forty and begins to feel mortal. The woman sees a double chin creeping up from her neck. An affair begins in the drive to cheat the sands of time. A businessperson, striving to get to the next level, sees the promotion go to a rival. Needing money to pay the mortgage, the young professional dreams up an embezzlement scheme and gets away with it for a few years. But then the hammer falls and prison becomes a permanent address.
Adultery, theft, scams, assault, and yes, even murder. Normal people doing abnormal crimes. Tyler had seen it all.
This one hurt more than most though, he had to admit, because he had come to appreciate Connie Brandon in a way he hadn’t appreciated any woman in many a year. He knew he shouldn’t feel this way, that Connie faced far too much grief for him to even consider it, but, dadgummit, he couldn’t help what he felt.
Connie Brandon deserved better than life had given her lately. But, that didn’t change the facts. Life didn’t always give us what we deserved. He, the husband of a good woman who died of breast cancer four years ago, knew that better than most. Now, he had to tell another good woman that the man she loved more than anything else in the whole world had most likely spent his last weeks on earth in the arms of another woman.
Reaching into the pocket of his denim shirt for a toothpick, Tyler closed his eyes and breathed a gentle prayer for Connie Brandon, a woman he had come to respect and care for in just a few short days.
CHAPTER
15
Taking care not to wake the kids, Connie quietly opened the side door and left the house at sunup on Tuesday. The air, crisp and clean, smelled pure, like God had just washed it with fresh water. Connie loved this time of day, when everything lay so quiet and serene. Moving out of her yard, she started to lift the weights she carried in each hand, up left, then down, up right, then down. Repeating the rhythm as she walked, she stared toward the Missouri River that ran to her right below the bluffs. The river ran swift but calm today, a snake of mud and moisture. Like everyone who spent any time thinking about it, Connie felt awe when she watched the river. It ran all the time, but it had new water in it every second it ran. Life was like that too—moving all the time, but some things never the same.
Her breath picked up pace. She hadn’t walked like this since the day Jack died, and the notion of doing it alone scared her. She gazed at the river and loneliness soaked her. She and Jack loved their walks together, often used them as times of reverent prayer. If not totally silent, they became just the opposite— so talkative they scared the squirrels away.
Connie smiled, remembering their conversations. Jack babbling about the store or the church and she running on and on about the children—a new dress for Katie or Daniel’s latest game—or school, a class finished, a class yet to take. If she only had tape recordings of their walks, she could trace their entire married life in them. But now she had no one to talk with her, no one to pray with her, no one with her at all. She had to face life alone, raise two kids alone, deal with the murder of her husband alone.
She didn’t know if she could manage it. Especially the last part—finding out what happened to Jack. What looked so simple last night now loomed as an impenetrable black cloud. How could she find out what the police couldn’t? They were the professionals, she the amateur. They knew about things like this, she didn’t. Jack’s death might forever remain a mystery—suspended between the suicide the circumstances indicated and the murder she knew in her soul had occurred.
Feeling herself sinking into self-pity, Connie searched her thoughts for a word of encouragement. Instantly, God provided one. She began to whisper the words of Jesus as she walked.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
As she walked faster and faster, her heart pumping harder and harder, she lifted the weights up and down and repeated the Lord’s words over and over. Yes, life became heavy at times and pressed down hard. But Jesus understood that feeling. Jesus could have yielded, given up in the face of it all. But Jesus kept working and serving and acting in the name of God. Through the strength of Jesus, she could do the same.
She pumped her arms faster, her spirits lifting as she walked and prayed. To her right, hundreds of feet below, the Missouri River flowed past, its great gush of water headed toward the Mississippi, which rushed onward to the Gulf of Mexico. Behind her, the sun rose in golden hues, its heat just beginning to lick at the edges of the earth. In that same direction, a quarter of a mile away, a lone man in a red Jaguar kept vigil, his binoculars peeping through the early morning air to keep her in sight. Holding his binoculars with his left hand, he flipped open a cell phone with his right. Another man answered the phone.
“I got the ears into Red’s place,” said the man in the Jaguar, “when she drove to St. Louis. We’ll know soon if she’s a threat or not.”
“Good work, Brit, keep me posted.”
Brit closed the phone and smoothed down his ponytail. Surveillance wasn’t his best thing. But who knew where it would lead.
*****
Luke Tyler left his house at just past 8:00 A.M., the videotape of Jack Brandon and Sandra Lunsford laying in the passenger seat of his car and a fresh toothpick in his mouth. Though dreading the encounter with Connie, he nonetheless wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Sleep had escaped him all night, and he knew he would remain awake until he completed this unpleasant chore.
Heading into town from his white-frame farmhouse ten miles out, he tried to think of some way to make this easier, but no magic solution came to mind. Sometimes, you just had to spill it out. Bad news sugarcoated tasted just as bitter. But, man, what a tough job. He just hoped Connie wouldn’t hate him because he was the one who carried the message.
Turning left off Highway 50, he switched on the radio and tuned to a local religious station. He needed that kind of music right now, something to remind him of the good in the world, something to remind him that, ultimately, evil wouldn’t win, current facts to the contrary. With the sounds of an old gospel hymn in the background, he turned onto West Bluff Drive and eased toward Connie’s house.
Parking two houses down, he paused for a second and cleared his head. Okay, it was just past 8:30. Her kids should have left for school. Just go to the door, tell her you need to talk, show her the video, help her with any calls she needs to make, and then leave. Stay professional. Do your job clean and neat and get out. He glanced in the mirror, then smoothed down his beard. He thought he saw movement to his rear in a red car a hundred yards or so down the road. Studying the rearview mirror, Tyler saw nothing else stir. Just his imagination.
He took one last breath, stepped out of the car, and tossed his toothpick to the ground. A minute later, he rang the doorbell and waited on Connie Brandon to answer so he could blow away what remained of her world.
*****
When Connie heard the doorbell ring, she quickly finished brushing her teeth. Already changed from her walk, she wore the simple khakis that made up so much of her daily wardrobe and a long-sleeved, emerald-green cotton shirt. Her red hair lay on her shoulders. As she glanced at herself in the mirror she decided she looked pretty good for a thirty eight year old suffering the deepest grief a human could feel. Feeling strangely guilty at the notion, she hustled from the bathroom to the front door.
Though startled to see Tyler when she opened the door, she recovered quickly. “Good morning, Mr. Tyler, come on in.” Tyler stepped past her into the narrow entry hall.
“Sorry to bother you so early,” he st
arted. “And would you please call me Luke?”
Connie motioned toward the den, then led him to it. “It’s not early for me, I’ve been up a couple of hours already. Took a walk, got the kids off to school . . . you know, a mom’s work is never done.”
In the den, she pointed him to a rocker, and he took it. She placed herself on the sofa directly across from the fireplace. Settling in, she noticed the manila envelope under his left arm.
“Hey, it’s not even blue,” she joked, pointing to the envelope. He laughed briefly, but she saw quickly his heart wasn’t in it. Her spirits sank. Without going any further, she sensed the envelope carried something she didn’t want to see.
It didn’t take him long to verify her fears. He hung his head over his knees, and she understood that what he had to say caused him great sadness. He didn’t want to do this, and for that she felt grateful.
She made it easier for him. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice soft.
He nodded. “I’ve got a video of Jack at the bank in St. Louis.”
Connie raised her eyebrows. “But how did you—?”
“Wilt Carver. Somebody gave it to him. I didn’t ask who.”
Anger flared in Connie’s stomach. “I asked him to get it for me,” she said.
“He said he didn’t know what to do with it. Wanted to protect you, keep you from doing something you shouldn’t do. He had to leave town this morning or he would have come himself.” Connie bit her lip. Wilt’s motives sounded understandable. And, she hadn’t specifically told him what to do with the tape when he found it. She decided to give him the benefit of a doubt.
Concentrating on Luke again, she wondered how much he knew about her activities over the last few days. Since he had the tape he also knew about the account in St. Louis. Perhaps he knew how much Jack put in it and how much she took out. Even more important, if the state gave him the authority, he might access the account and find out about the check to Reed Morrison, whoever he was. Another possibility came to her.
“Why is the tape bad news?” she asked. “I’m glad to see Jack one more time. Even if he is doing something he kept a secret from me, it’s still the last video I’ll ever have of him. How can that be bad?”