“And it is. You know that. But the coin doesn’t have anything to do with Vera. How can it? It’s just a whatchacallit. Red heron. Or red Herman. Or—”
“Red herring?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He’d gotten me riled up, and as every woman alive knows, there’s nothing like the endorphins in chocolate to calm a girl down. I grabbed another hunk of brownie and talked with my mouth full. “Did Morgan have some kind of grudge against you? No, I didn’t think so. And besides, wasn’t he in prison at the time Vera was killed? You said he was a small-time crook, so was he the type who could have arranged a hit from the inside? Because of some sort of vendetta? What, you guys were fighting about the value of wheat pennies?”
I stared at him long and hard, waiting for his answers, and when he didn’t say a thing, I shouted a triumphant, “Aha!” I spun away, then spun around again. It took a while for my skirt to settle down.
“The Morgan thing is a dead end,” I said. “Admit it. Talking to him isn’t going to help us. It isn’t going to get us anywhere. I’d be wasting my time. Which I don’t have much of these days, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“You don’t want to talk to him because you’re afraid to walk into a prison.” Of course I was going to dispute this and remind him that I wasn’t afraid of anything, not even ghosts. But he stopped me like a traffic cop, one hand in the air. “I know you’ve got courage. You don’t need to remind me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have gone to see Bad Dog. Or Reno Bob. That’s not what I’m talking about, Pepper, and you know it. You don’t want
I would have argued with this. If I could think of anything to say. Instead, I grabbed another bit of brownie. I didn’t eat it, though. I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Lamar stepped closer. “You feel embarrassed. And let down. It’s natural. I saw it so often in the families of the men who were incarcerated. Your father, he betrayed your trust.”
I shrugged. What other response could I give him? While I was at it, I tossed the brownie, washed my hands again, and grabbed a glass for a drink of water. All that chocolate was clogged in my throat.
“I could go with you if that would help.” I was still facing the sink and Lamar’s voice came from behind me.
“To see Dale Morgan?” I turned to him. “Or to see my dad?”
“Either. Both. Though I think we should concentrate on Morgan first. If he knows something valuable—”
“You think?”
He spread his hands. “I’d like to find out.”
Yeah, me, too.
The only question was, how much?
I didn’t have the answer, and I couldn’t pretend I did. Maybe that’s why Lamar felt he had to try a little harder to convince me.
“Maybe there’s something he can tell us about—”
“Maybe.” I’d admit that much.
“You’re the only one who can do it,” he reminded me.
Not technically correct. I wasn’t the only one who could talk to Dale Morgan. I was, however, the only one who could report the conversation back to Jefferson Lamar.
“I’d really appreciate it.” I knew Lamar wasn’t comfortable
“There isn’t.” He didn’t need me to remind him, but I did, anyway. “I know I’m the only one. It’s just—”
He swallowed his pride so hard, I saw his Adam’s apple bob. “Pepper, please. I owe her.”
Of course he was talking about Helen, the wife who’d never stopped believing in him, but he never had a chance to elaborate. That’s because Delmar and Reggie raced into the room and Jefferson Lamar disappeared in a poof.
“There you are!” Delmar was red in the face. “We got us a situation.”
I didn’t want to ask, but it was another case of I-didn’t-have-a-choice. “What kind of situation?”
Reggie was breathing hard. “We been running all over this place lookin’ for you. Absalom, he went outside. Jake is somewhere takin’ pictures . . .” He waved away the thought that Jake would be any help, anyway. “We need you and we need you now.”
He hadn’t mentioned Sammi, and my heart shot into my throat, then slammed down somewhere at the bottom of my just-about-empty stomach.
Delmar pulled in a breath. “Virgil walked in the front door about ten minutes ago. He and Sammi headed somewhere together, only we can’t find ’em anywhere. And that Greer, she saw him, too. She’s looking all over, practically drooling about the possibility of catching another fight.”
“Shit.” It was the only appropriate response. I headed out of the kitchen with them. “Where have you looked?” I asked.
“Outside. Back in the sunroom and in the library.” Reggie rolled his eyes at the very thought that any
I glanced to my right and the winding staircase that led up to the second floor. “Anybody look up there?”
They shook their heads, and I took the steps two at a time.
The second floor of the home was no less impressive than the first. There were doors open on either side of the wide hallway, and when I peeked inside, I saw what might have been referred to in those ritzy home design magazines not as bedrooms, but as boudoirs. Each door led into a private suite that included a dressing room, a bedroom, and a sort of sitting room, and each one was chocked full of white furniture dabbed with gold. There was no sign of Virgil and Sammi in any of them.
And no splatters of blood, either, which in the great scheme of things actually cheered me.
Until I heard sounds from down at the end of the hallway.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Thankful for such an all-purpose word, I raced in the direction of the room at the end of the hall. The door was closed, and here, the sounds were louder than ever. Grunts, groans, moans. Prepared for mayhem, I shoved open the door.
It would have opened all the way if it hadn’t caught on the Wonder Bread dress lying on the floor.
“Oh.” Embarrassed more by my own naïveté than by what I saw happening in the bed on the other side of the room, I stood rooted to the spot, grateful that Sammi and Virgil were so busy doing what they were doing, they didn’t notice me. Desperate to keep it that way, I back-stepped out of the room and clicked the door closed.
Delmar caught up with me. “They in there?”
“Oh, yeah.” I looked over his shoulder. “And Greer—”
“Not to worry.” Reggie came running up the hallway. “Absalom told her he saw Sammi go after Virgil in the garden, so we got time to get them off each other.”
“Or not.”
They looked at me in amazement. “Apparently Sammi and Virgil have a love-hate relationship,” I told them. “Right now, they’re in a love phase.”
14
Jefferson Lamar was right! He was right about me avoiding Dale Morgan. He was right about me doing it because walking into a prison was just too painful. He was right about my dad. Of course he was.
But there was no way I was going to admit it. Not to Lamar. Not to myself.
With that in mind (or more accurately, not in mind, since I refused to think about it), I spent the next few days after the Team One fundraiser trying to prove to myself that I didn’t need to talk to Dale Morgan to help me solve the case.
I went back to the park where I’d met Reno Bob and sat in my car and kept an eye on him, just waiting for him to do something suspicious. He never did.
I went back to Bad Dog’s Big Car Nation and hung around in the check-cashing place next door, as inconspicuous as I could be under the hot pink and orange
I reexamined the crime scene photos and reread the suspect and witness interviews, and I realized that if I’d been paying more attention the other umpteen times I’d read through the file, I could have saved myself the pleasure of meeting Steve the Strip Man. There was a rust-colored mark on Steve’s interview transcript that showed there had once been a paperclip attached to it, and a free-floating, handwritten note in the file with said rusty paperclip still attached. Eliminated, it said. Incarc
erated.
Just like Reno and Bad Dog at the time of Vera’s murder. But not at Central State.
Did it matter? Not if Vera was the intended victim all along, and Jefferson Lamar was just the patsy who got in the way.
With all these questions swirling in my head, and as long as I had the file out, I reread the newspaper articles about the murder. By now, I knew the details by heart. Maybe that’s why, for the first time, I bothered to look at the byline above the stories.
Mike Kowalski.
The same name appeared over and over, and it sounded familiar. Just to check, I grabbed the morning’s Plain Dealer and paged through it. Mike Kowalski was still around, all right. That day, there just happened to be an article about him at the top of the Metro section. Apparently, he was some kind of hotshot because he’d just won a national award for investigative reporting. I skimmed the article that appeared below the picture of Kowalski
Oh yeah, Kowalski was a journalistic superhero, all right, but I called him anyway, and I was all set to give him my song and dance about restoration and research. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. He was a fan of Cemetery Survivor. In fact, he said I was one hot chick and his favorite thing about the program.
Just how desperate was I?
I made a date to meet him for coffee anyway.
Thanks to that photo that ran with the story about him, I recognized Kowalski the moment I walked into a neighborhood bar called Sullivan’s, even though he wasn’t wearing tights and a cape like I expected.
It was just as well. Kowalski was a middle-aged bald guy with a triple chin. He was wearing khakis, a blue oxford-cloth skirt, and a tie that was light blue with yellow polka dots that were supposed to be there and a bunch of food stains that weren’t. Kowalski had beady eyes. They lit like Fourth of July fireworks the moment he caught sight of me.
I did my best not to get grossed out, slid into the booth across from where he sat, and ordered coffee. There was a fat cheeseburger and a double order of fries on the plate in front of him. He added a lake of ketchup and looked me over.
Don’t worry, as soon as I heard that “hot chick” comment, I knew what was going to happen, and I had wisely
He was so not getting it.
“Research, huh?” Kowalski grinned the way older guys always do when they’re trying too hard to impress a younger woman. “You sure you weren’t just looking for an excuse to meet me?”
I’d already decided there was only one sure way to a reporter’s heart, and I kept to my plan. I’d stopped at Garden View that morning and made copies of all the newspaper articles in the police file, and I pulled them out of my purse and plunked them on the Formica table. “I’ve been reading your clippings. You must know more than anyone about the Vera Blaine murder.”
He chewed a couple fries and washed them down with a slurp of coffee. “I’ve been thinking about writing a book about it. Hey, if they make it into a movie, you want to star?”
He wasn’t serious. I wasn’t interested. I twinkled. “That would be terrific. Only it might not happen for a while, right? I mean, it takes a long time to get a movie made. By then, I’ll be too old to play Vera.”
He grabbed his burger and took a bite. Ketchup, mustard, and onions oozed out of the bun and slopped onto his plate, splashed his tie, and added a couple new polka dots. “We can make an exception,” he said, with his mouth full. “For you, honey, I’d do anything.”
I added sweetener to my coffee and took a sip. “Let’s start with your articles.” I spread them out. “You wrote a lot of them. You were really well connected to the case.”
“I was a jerk.” He didn’t sound embarrassed, just sorry. “I was fresh out of J school and I took every assignment
“Did it?”
He set down his burger so he could grab some more fries. “If it did, would I be sitting here right now?”
I thought back to the story in the morning paper, and believe me, I wasn’t trying to score points, just stating the facts when I said, “You’re some kind of god when it comes to investigative reporting. You won—”
“That big award. Yeah, right. Blah, blah, blah.” You’d think a guy who’d been singled out for his excellence would be a little more thrilled. Kowalski waved the whole thing off like it was nothing. “You’re young,” he said. “Someday maybe you’ll understand.” He chuckled, though I didn’t know what was supposed to be so funny. “Or maybe not.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what we were talking about. My best bet was to keep the conversation on track.
I thumbed through the articles until I found the one I was looking for. “I’m curious,” I told him, “about the desk clerk from the Lake View Motel, this Aaron Burton guy.”
Kowalski darted a look at me that I could read as clearly as I could his lame pick-up line. He was wondering if there was more to me than just a great body and a pretty face.
Was that good or bad?
Rather than worry about it, I stayed focused. I pointed to one of the articles, and because it was upside down to him, I read out loud. “You quoted the desk clerk here . . . ‘“They was here plenty,” said Aaron Burton, a Lake View employee. “I seen them before, lots of times.” ’ ”
I set down the article, planted my elbows on the table,
Kowalski finished his coffee and waved the waitress over for more. It wasn’t until after she poured and he added three packs of sugar and four of those little creamers that he bothered to answer me. “What makes you think he lied?”
“It’s hard to explain.” True enough, since the only thing I had to go on was the word of a dead guy who swore up and down that his and Vera’s relationship was nothing more than what was appropriate for a boss and his secretary. “I don’t think Lamar and Vera were having an affair.”
Kowalski tipped his chin in the direction of the article I’d just read to him. “That’s not what that guy said, is it? And he was there. You . . .” He gave me a quick once-over. “At the time, my guess is that you were maybe in kindergarten.”
I smiled because Kowalski’s voice was tight and that beady gaze of his was focused on me in a way that told me he was getting pissed. I didn’t know why, but I knew that if I didn’t keep things on an even keel, he was going to ask me to leave, and I was going to lose out on anything he could tell me. “But here’s the thing . . . Aaron Burton never testified at Lamar’s trial,” I said, and I knew this because I’d been through the file so many times and double-checked my hunch just in case I’d missed something. “In fact, the cops never even interviewed him after the murder. If his testimony was so crucial to the case—”
“Apparently it wasn’t. They convicted Jefferson Lamar without it.”
“But why? How?” I was amazed that an investigative reporter with Kowalski’s reputation didn’t see what I
He had a fry in his hand and he tossed it on his plate, where it landed in a pool of ketchup and added another spot to his tie and one on his shirt. “You think I wasn’t telling the truth?”
“Not at all!” I was losing Kowalski and I was losing him fast. I scrambled to keep my questions coming at the same time I sidestepped around his ego. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not a professional. I mean, not like you. I’m just a cemetery worker looking for a way to look good on a silly TV show.” I leaned forward. “You want to help me, don’t you?”
He sat back. His gaze flickered from my face to the front of my shirt.
I avoided the temptation to get up and leave.
It was a good thing, because the next second, Kowalski gave in.
“Aaron Burton was a druggie,” he told me. “The reason he never testified was that by the time of the trial, nobody could find him.”
“And you think—”
He pushed away his plate. “He didn’t testify because the cops could never find him. The kid probably OD’d or something. Chances are, he was lying dead somewhere and maybe nobody ever found the body.”
“Seems awfully convenient, don’t y
ou think?”
“Not for Burton. Not if he was dead.” Kowalski hauled himself out of the booth and tossed a twenty on the table. “I’ll get your coffee,” he said. “That way I can go back to the office and tell people I bought lunch for a beautiful woman. They won’t believe me, but what the hell.”
And just like that, he walked out.
I spent a lot of time wondering about my conversation with Mike Kowalski. For one thing, I wondered what I’d gained from our meeting. But mostly, I wondered why Aaron Burton had dropped so conveniently out of sight. If what Jefferson Lamar claimed about his relationship with Vera was true, the desk clerk was lying when he said they’d been to the Lake View together plenty of times. To me, that meant Aaron Burton had been paid to say what he said. Maybe paid so much, he went out and celebrated until he OD’d?
I would never know, of course, but it was an intriguing possibility, and though I don’t know any other private investigators, so I can’t really speak for them, my guess was that there wasn’t a PI anywhere who wouldn’t have been at least a little curious.
If only I had the time to worry about it!
The next week was a whirr of cemetery work, and we tried to keep our chins up and get ready for our team’s fundraiser in spite of the sobering news that Team One had been awarded twenty points for its tea and we were lagging thirty points behind. We worked like dogs, and if it wasn’t for Ella, we would have probably ended up looking like idiots.
I would have been grateful if she just kept to her cheerleader role and didn’t decide to deliver bad news just an hour before our fundraiser was scheduled to start.
“Five thousand dollars? Team One raised more than five thousand dollars?” I paced the wide flagstone veranda outside the Garfield Memorial, stunned by the news Ella had just delivered. “That means they had . . .” Math is not one of my strong points. I tried to do some
She peeked at the papers in the file folder she was carrying. “Two hundred and fifty-six,” she said. “They sold two hundred and fifty-six tickets to the tea.”
“And we’ve sold, like, what?” I tried to remember, and again, the numbers failed me.
Dead Man Talking Page 17