Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont

by Chappell,Connie

  But now, my reassessment was all about potential, and the face captured by Miles Glickstein was not living up to it. She had an aura about her, which the lens sought out and preserved. She had the hair, the makeup, the perfect proportions. She definitely pulled it together, then took it out to Dooley’s Bar, a bottom-feeder dive, mind you, on the outskirts of town. No, I wasn’t buying it.

  And how does Gina tie into Trey? She ties into the theft as well if my suspicions are correct. Before this day was over, I hoped I found out.

  I turned to the seat beside me. There lay Lucy’s report, Georgie’s business card, and the slip of paper on which Barton wrote Gina’s address. After checking the city map I retrieved from the glove box and unfolded, I started up Midnight and pointed her toward Randall Avenue in McCauley’s Addition.

  McCauley’s had been tacked onto the southwest corner of the city in the early 1930s to house immigrant farm workers for the 500-acre McCauley farm. The streets were named for Old Man McCauley’s brood of twelve. After he died and the farmland became the county’s municipal airport, the remaining McCauley heirs sold off the tract of homes at rock-bottom prices to their father’s loyal workers. McCauley is the most ethnically diverse section of HavenSusanna Springs.

  It took less than fifteen minutes to reach McCauley, which existed before zoning and standards were issues, and another fifteen to navigate the streets so narrow they were posted as one-way. I finally found Randall between siblings Estelle and Norman. The crackerbox-sized houses were positioned on the lots like piano keys and just as close. An anemic grassy strip out front pushed the homes back from the road no more than eight to ten feet. Each had a four-step concrete stoop, flanked on either side by a wooden banister.

  Searching for house numbers, Midnight and I poked slowly down Randall. My mouth dropped when the address Barton gave me came up.

  Wilkey Summer sat out front.

  Foresight had not been given to driveways in McCauley. Parking was on the street, at a premium, and limited to one side. I pulled into a spot three doors down and followed the sidewalk back.

  Wilkey took it easy on the front stoop of a drab cream-colored place with a steeply pitched roof. Shirtless, he sat on the second step down. His pale, hairless chest was devoid of any muscular definition. The exposed rim of tidy-whities hugged his slim waist above faded blue jeans. He slipped his feet into dime-store flip-flops before venturing outside. Wilkey started his morning off right with a Miller beer. It sat beside him. Scratching his mop of brown hair, he gave me a curious look when he saw me heading his way along squares of fractured concrete leading to the tiny house.

  “Remember me? I’m Wrenn Grayson.” I stopped a few feet in front of him, the envelope of pictures in my hand.

  He straightened. “Yeah. Dooley’s Bar. Thursday night. The police aren’t going to roll in behind you, are they?”

  “God, I hope not,” I said, reflexively glancing down the street in the direction I came.

  Through slanted eyes, he asked, “Did you set me up?”

  “Not at all. You don’t know how much trouble I got in for getting there ahead of the cops, but I can see how you’d think that. Like I said Thursday, I’m just trying to help a friend.”

  “You know they hauled me downtown?”

  “I heard that.”

  “Hey, who are you? Just what puts you in the middle of all this?”

  “My name is Wrenn Grayson,” I repeated. I admit I succumbed to my odd sense of humor that shows up at times. My literal response to his question was not well received. I talked past the sneer on his face that said I considered him dim-witted. “I do a bit of historical research for clients—well, client, really, so far I only have the one.”

  He evened up the score with a haughty “Huh.”

  To which, I tacked on, “And I work for the mayor.”

  “Well, isn’t that just real convenient,” he teased, leaning back, his elbows on the step behind him. “He know you’re doing this? Coming out here to McCauley. No, I get it,” he concluded, pulling himself forward again, waving a finger at me. “This friend of yours must know the mayor. That why he’s getting special treatment?”

  “The mayor’s not involved. I’m here on my own. I was hired to do some research on the Rosemont family. There’s a historical homestead—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. The house on Hattersfield.”

  “The murdered man was part of that family. You know him as Jimmy Kushmaul.”

  “The cops told me that, too.”

  “Good. Then if you have a little time, Wilkey, could we talk a bit?” I asked, pleading ever so nicely.

  “Well, lady, let me tell you something. I don’t care about your friend or your research.” He made moves to collect his morning beer and drag himself into the house where I would be ceremoniously uninvited. He spoke his parting comment: “All I care about is, I need an alibi, which I got, but can’t prove.”

  Quickly, I asked, “Is Gina your alibi?”

  The waves of emotion that crossed his face at the mention of her name were a startling mix: confusion, disbelief, anger, then finally he settled on sorrow. It had been just a guess on my part. I wanted to slow his departure, but her name stopped him as surely as if he collided with an invisible wall, leaving him stunned and open-mouthed. Our eyes held for a handful of seconds, then his dropped to the pictures I took from the envelope.

  I stepped closer, handing them over. “She’s the redhead, isn’t she?”

  He melted at the sight of her. Only his forearms meeting his knees kept him upright. “Oh, god,” he breathed, “Gina.”

  Silently, I sat down next to him and waited, focused on my hands clasped in my lap. He was completely absorbed in the moment. Memories ran back to him. His heart broke all over again. In the grief that seeped out, I knew she left without telling him. This accounted for his sullen mood Thursday night. Sniffing, he wiped first one eye, then the other with the back of his hand. My unease grew. I didn’t know what to say, how to console him. Thankfully, he spoke first, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “I didn’t expect to see her again. Not in person, and certainly not in a picture. This is her in that play she was doing. She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

  “She’s beautiful.” I paused. “She’s not coming back?”

  “She didn’t even say goodbye. I came home from work Thursday and all her stuff was gone.” He made another swipe at his cheek.

  “Why would she take off like that?”

  His shoulders heaved, then dropped with a sigh. “I don’t know.”

  “How long were you two together?”

  “She lived here with me for three months, nearly four. It’s hard to believe actually—that she’d fall for a guy like me—but she did. Now that’s she gone, I can’t stand to stay inside the house. I guess I’ll just sit out here or over at Dooley’s from now on.”

  Counting back, I said, “You met her in March.”

  “Yeah, she came into Norb Engle’s. That’s where I work. Norb does a lot of things, but he’s a locksmith, too. That’s sort of my trade.” He smirked slightly at an inside joke he didn’t bother to explain. “But anyhow, one day, Gina came in to have a key made. We sort of hit it off. I took her out a few times. Nothing fancy. Look at me.” His snicker accompanied an all-encompassing hand gesture that included himself and the house. “But like I said, we hit it off, then she moved in. She didn’t have much, you know, possessions. Just a couple suitcases of clothes. Then when the play came around, she wanted to go for it. That was her dream, to be an actress.”

  “Where’d she move from? Did she have a place in town?”

  “She lived in a furnished apartment with three other girls. She found someone to take her part of the rent, then moved in with me.” To that, he added a weak shrug.

  “You remember where the apartment was? Do you think she’d go back there?”

  “She never said where it was. And even if she did go back, I’m not chasing her. She knows wh
ere I am.”

  As far as concrete leads, Wilkey wasn’t supplying much, but I found I liked him. I liked how he didn’t hide the emotions leaking from his crushed heart. I hoped he was equally open to receiving my openness when I said, “I’m sorry the cops took you in, Wilkey.”

  “No shit,” he said in agreement. “It was a damn setup. Just because I have a record.”

  “What’d you do?” I wasn’t sure he received my apology as a sincere one, but when he revealed his misguided past with a boyish grin, I interpreted that as headway.

  “Ah, it was a little petty thievery. I picked some locks, did some time. But I proved myself, and Norb trusted me. He gave me a job when I got probation. I’ve been clean now five years. Then that guy came in, accusing me of making keys and letting me and Jimmy, or Rosemont,” he said, rolling his hand as he added the alternate name, “into that house out on Hattersfield. And I told him and the cops flat out, I didn’t kill Jimmy. I was home all night.”

  His eyes were locked on mine as he spoke. That confirmed my trust in him: Believability lived in his words. “But the night before, what happened with him out at Dooley’s?”

  His gaze strayed momentarily. “I stayed late at Norb’s to make a set of keys Gina needed. We planned to meet at Dooley’s. When I walked in, Jimmy was there, sitting with her.”

  “You assumed he was making moves on your girl.”

  “Yeah, what else?”

  “And that’s when you fought with him.”

  “It wasn’t much of a fight.”

  This, I heard.

  The eyes that returned to the photo looked up again. “Gina said she didn’t know he would be there when she went to wait for me.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “I did then.” He swallowed. “But not so much now.” His spirit seemed to deflate, then he revived himself. “I was upfront with Norb. He didn’t like it too much when the cops questioned me. But he knows I’d never kill anyone. And he stood by me when that guy came in and made a big stink. Hell, he accused Norb, too.”

  “That guy is Clay Addison. He’s my client,” I admitted shyly.

  “Him. He’s your client. Man, I don’t know why I’m sitting so close. That guy was bad news, and you’re associated with him,” he exclaimed, scooting away, his hand finding the beer can. He was obviously overacting, and I felt my face light. His fearful exaggeration continued when he twisted his face skyward. “No, no, I ought to be safe from lightning bolts, but you never know.”

  “Stop it.” I gave a playful nudge to his shoulder and received a genuine smile, the first one I saw. I wanted to start over as friends and anchored our budding relationship on something of value. To this end, I said, “I think you know you can trust me, Wilkey. The whole story is: the cops have also accused Clay Addison of the murder.”

  Wilkey’s smile dissolved. “Trust you? I get it. You’re here to pin this murder on me. I didn’t do it, lady.”

  “No, that’s not my intent,” I jumped to say, then slumped a little on the cement step. “Well, honestly, that’s not my intent anymore. I believe you. And you can trust me. You didn’t do it, but Clay didn’t do it either.” Left unspoken was the only viable alternative: someone else must be the murderer. It wasn’t as open-ended as it might appear. Trey had been shot between midnight and two. The murderer pulled the trigger twice. “So, anyway, Gina’s your alibi for Wednesday night?”

  “She was at play practice till ten. I stayed home and watched the game. When she got here, we watched the end of it together.”

  In those words lived a neatly packed lie. With my trust revved up in Wilkey, there was no choice but to suspect Gina. I padded my response, hoping to soften its delivery. “I talked with Gina’s director Thursday. He told me she quit the play late Wednesday morning. I don’t think she would’ve been at practice that night.”

  The words hung there a moment, like an iron weight, before he spoke. “Then where was she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I could sense him slipping away. So, lightheartedly, I asked, “Are you a Cubs fan?”

  “No, she was.”

  “You two were together all night. She couldn’t have left, gone out again for some reason?”

  He shook his head; his anger stirring. His gaze dropped to her picture again, then abruptly, he shuffled through the rest, getting her out of his sight. I asked if anyone else looked familiar. No one did.

  Disappointed, I thought for a moment, wondering where to go next, distracted somewhat while he calmly slid the duplicated photos back in the envelope and laid them on the step. I sensed his heart darken, crossing that very fine line where love turns to hate.

  “Wilkey, it doesn’t sound like Tuesday was the first time you ever saw Jimmy.”

  “No. Two days before. I came home. Gina was out on the porch when I got here, and he was walking to his car a few houses down.”

  “What’d she say about him? Why had he come by?”

  “Just that he was a friend of a friend and stopped to say hello.”

  “Did you see his car?”

  “I didn’t get a good look. Silver. Full-sized.”

  That matched. “Did she say where he was from?” I hoped for another confirmation.

  “I assumed from around here.”

  I knew that wasn’t right, but his words made me think. I assumed the same thing about her. I exchanged my earlier question for a longer reaching one. “Gina from Ohio?”

  “Nuh-uh. Illinois.”

  “Hmm,” I said noncommittally. When I left a few minutes later, he was folding in on himself again. Only briefly had I glimpsed the real Wilkey Summer, sweet and teasing, like a kid brother might’ve been.

  Beware

  I retraced my steps along the narrow sidewalk in McCauley’s Addition and ducked into the car. Depositing the cast pictures on the passenger seat, I sat there, thinking. The fact that Gina and Trey both hailed from Illinois was most compelling. Like a game of hide and seek, a memory flickered on, then off again. While it was fleeting and vague, a sense of importance lingered. I closed my eyes, hoping to coax it back, but it evaporated into a fine mist when my phone rang.

  “Guess what I just found out about Barton Reed.” Penny Skilling’s words were delivered with a dollop of suspicion, just enough to lure my lost thought into the light again.

  Ah, yes. Barton Reed, a Chicagoan. Trey, Gina, and Barton. The three of them from Illinois. Come to visit our little town. One died. One disappeared. One director still in residence.

  I tuned back into my best friend. Penny was manning the vet clinic’s front desk, helping her husband, Max, with the Saturday morning crowd. “The kid from Cummings Office Supply who delivered the scripts is here with his cat. His name’s Lennie Perkins. His, not the cat’s. It took us a minute to realize we just saw each other at the theater.” Then her voice dropped. “We got to talking, and, Wrenn, he says Barton brought the script changes in on Wednesday.”

  “No. Thursday,” I corrected.

  “He said Wednesday. Sometime around the middle of the day is what he remembers.”

  “But that can’t be,” I argued. “Gina didn’t quit until Wednesday noon. Barton told Craig Bittleman he did the rewrites Wednesday night. That’s why he missed seeing the Reds game at his place. You heard him.”

  “I know, but Lennie says he brought them in on Wednesday and that Barton was real specific. He didn’t want them delivered until Thursday. Lennie said that was out of character because he’d been in several times with jobs like that and he always wanted them turned around quickly.”

  I hopped in my seat. “Hey, I’ve got Barton’s copy of that work order.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  I rooted in the other seat, coming up with it. “He used the back of it yesterday to write down Gina’s contact information.”

  “Oh, here comes Mrs. Simmons and Corky,” Penny said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  A yipping commotion rose in volume. I pictur
ed this Mrs. Simmons leading a pint-sized puff-of-hair into the clinic on the repurposed dairy farm. While the two women spoke back and forth amidst the little dog’s vehement protests, I studied the customer’s copy of the work order, picking up sprigs of patient information. When yapping Corky could not be soothed, Penny bustled them off into an exam room.

  Quiet resumed, and I concluded the Cummings form was straightforward. Barton’s name and the theater’s address were written on lines provided. Under Duplication Services, he ordered twenty copies on blue paper. Checkmarks selected other options: single-sided, collated, stapled. Lennie’s memory was infallible. He logged the job in on Wednesday at 12:50.

  The words in the Special Instructions box stood out today as they did when I delivered the job personally to Barton: “Scripts Xeroxed—Hold For Delivery.” This was written in a dark indigo, not the carbonless shadow of the rest of the form. The angular penmanship was not Barton’s. I compared it to his handwriting on the flip side.

  Barton had not rewritten the script ousting Gina Frawley’s character on Wednesday evening as he claimed, but earlier. This told me he knew of Gina’s departure in advance. That raised two questions: one quite legitimate; one because I’m the nosy sort. Why would he lie about the timing? And, what was he doing Wednesday night instead? One possibility—in his defense—perhaps he just didn’t want to go to Bittleman’s house to watch the game, and so, to spare feelings, produced a credible lie.

  Then Penny’s voice came through the receiver. “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

  “Well, the kid got it right. Barton went there Wednesday. Left the script off at ten till one.”

  “Wow, he must’ve raced over to Cummings and back. He had to get rehearsal started at one-thirty.”

  From the regularity of my visits, I knew the crew had the stage until noon. Everyone broke for lunch with the cast coming in after that.

  I heard Max’s approaching voice and queued Penny. “If that’s Lennie with Max, ask if he’ll speak with me about the paperwork.”