Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Okay, so let me just print this out, and you can have it,” he said, licking his lips, obviously wishing I’d disappear.

  I picked up the computerized list and, starting with my name, worked backwards. There were only three for that day: mine and two others. I tapped on the paper and showed him the company name, then took out a copy of the newspaper photo of Autumn and held it up. “Is this the woman who signed on this?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s her. She paid with a credit card. It wasn’t stolen, was it? Did she wreck it? I wouldn’t want to get into trouble for that.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think it was stolen.” If the card Autumn used was stolen, it would have bounced by now. Didn’t Garth tell me he’d canceled her credit card? Guess not.

  “I can get you a copy of it,” he said, suddenly helpful. “I gave her the last good automatic we had.” His head snapped up and he peered over the counter at me. “Hey, you came in too, dincha? We didn’t have any more good ones, just the clunker. Sorry ‘bout that, Officer.”

  “I’ll take that copy,” I said, ignoring the fact that he was starting to repeat himself. “Sounds to me like you’ve got parents who care about you. Get some new friends and get a hobby, ‘cause jail isn’t where you want to spend your summer vacation.”

  Out in the car, Maya was squirming with excitement. “Well?”

  “It would have been a snap if I were talking to more brain and less drugs. Don’t let me ever catch you doing that shit!”

  She giggled. “Are you kidding? My parents, my brother, heck, all my aunts and uncles would kill me if I did ‘that shit.’ So what did you find?”

  “While waiting for the garage to fix the Caddy, I got a rental here. When I complained about the quality of the vehicle, the customer service kid said he’d rented the last good one to a redhead.”

  Maya made an appreciative sound. “That was her? Alexandra Graham, right? She was the redhead? So what’s it mean?”

  “The credit card she used is from a truck stop called Four Corners in Enid, Oklahoma. It’s Garth’s. She used his credit card to rent a car. It means he knew she was here. Her prints were on the windowsill outside his aunt’s house, and there’s her little gold pendant she admitted was hers. It was found crushed in the door of my Caddy. It means, at the very least, she was there with him when he dumped his aunt in my car into the lake. She was trying to get him jailed so he wouldn’t come after her. I think it was because she planned a double-cross for her ex-ex-ex-fiancé.”

  She shivered. “So Garth killed her?”

  “I’m thinking he did. Let’s see if we can find that money.”

  ~*~

  Maya sat in the RV parking lot with instructions to call me on her cell should Garth come back. Under no circumstances was she to get out of the car or do anything else. Wide-eyed, she nodded. When I opened the car door, she suddenly grabbed my hand. “If he’s a suspect, won’t the cops be watching his place?”

  “Good thinking. Except that yesterday I helped Caleb crack this case, so they’re too busy following him around to make sure he doesn’t leave town to watch his RV.” I didn’t add that Caleb hadn’t been particularly grateful.

  I got out and went into the office. The manager, a petite, elderly woman, smiled and helpfully walked me outside so she could point out the motor home. All the while eyeing the car, Maya and me. Great. She’d no doubt tell Garth about his visitors the minute he stuck his head in her office. Hopefully, it would be too late.

  I hoofed it down the narrow paved road to his motor home.

  The little key I’d pilfered that first night from his chair cushion fit perfectly. Inside, I tried to think where I might find an escape hatch. All the windows and the door could be easily watched by one bored patrolman. But could he have gotten out by another exit? A window, a secret escape hatch?

  I went directly to the rear of the bus, opening closets, checking windows. The bathroom had all its towels neatly hanging on their racks and the mini window above the shower was too small for anything but steam to escape. The bed was made up with a spread matching the window curtains over mini-blinds. The windows might allow someone smaller than Garth to slip out, but I rather imagined he would have a better way. I opened the mirrored closet door and looked inside. Then closing the closet door, I saw the neatly made up bed in the mirrored doors, and turning around to face the bed, I wondered, what kind of a frame does a motor home bed sit on? Getting down on my hands and knees, I pulled back the spread. The mattress sat on a platform, the carpet bending up to cover the sides. I tapped on the short walls. Hollow. I scooted along, pulling at the top edge of the carpet until a large square piece came away in my hands. The carpet was backed with plywood that matched the rest of the platform. The size was big enough for a man of Garth’s size to crawl into, if he were so inclined. But what was below?

  Then I heard the outside door open. Someone was coming! Why didn’t Maya page me? Had she missed Garth driving in? Or did he sneak in from another direction?

  I slid through the opening, down into the dark hole, and feeling my feet touch bottom, I pushed the panel back into place.

  As I listened to the movement above me, another stab of fear suddenly prickled at the back of my neck. Did I remember to pull the bedspread down over the panel before I disappeared?

  I held my breath as footsteps moved across the floor. It was the light-footed scurry of a mouse gathering crumbs, tiptoeing into the bathroom and then back to the bedroom. It couldn’t be Garth. He would have a heavier footfall, secure in the knowledge he was in his own home. No, there was nothing about this person that said Garth.

  Eddy? It had to be him, that little rat. What was he doing here? Probably the same thing I was doing—looking for the lost loot. What was this, open house for cat burglars? If I could be sure it was Eddy, I would bust out of my hiding place, grab him and shake him by the shirt until his teeth rattled.

  Then again, it might be someone else. I was breathing nervously through my teeth, then quit when I realized the hissing I was making sounded like a deflating tire. Could I get out of here without him seeing me? If this was Garth’s escape route, there had to be a way out—one that would fool the cops.

  I tried to forget I was crouched in a space not meant for human habitation and pried a key ring from my jeans pocket. I found the attached penlight and flashed it around. The place was obviously a storage compartment. An old TV antenna was shoved onto a shelf with a plastic cleaning bucket, brushes and a rolled-up hammock. Behind the hammock, the light glinted off something shiny.

  I flashed the beam at it again. It looked like a small suitcase. I edged myself sideways to get a better look. With faded brown and beige cloth stripes, rotting leather carrying handle, and metal corners turning to rust, it was an ugly stepsister to the handsome luggage piled next to it. This was it. Eddy hadn’t bothered transferring Hollander’s drug money to another container, and neither had Garth. It was here, still in the little suitcase just like he must’ve found it. I stretched my arm as far into the cubbyhole as I could, reaching until I thought my arm would come out of its socket, but still I couldn’t get to it without making a racket. Damn. I would have to leave it for Caleb. Disappointing, since I so wanted to be the one to hand him that suitcase full of money.

  Now, to get out of here. I scooted around on my butt looking for an opening to the outside. There had to be one, since all compartments like this would have some kind of exterior access.

  I found the answer under my feet. It was a pull latch in the floor. I gave it an experimental tug and cracked the hatch, just enough to let in some fresh air, then wider.

  The sound reverberated in the compartment like a metal garbage can lid being tossed down a quiet street. I held my breath. Nothing. If he didn’t hear me, it was only because I was the one in the garbage can.

  I yanked it back, put my feet down first and then rolled out onto the ground, thinking I’d run back to the car, call Caleb, tell him I’d found the stolen loot and Eddy
McBride. I peered out from under my hiding place; no black police-issued shoes. Safe at last.

  I rolled out from under the coach, then got slammed to the ground, with a foot on my back to keep me face down. With the gravel making marks in my cheeks, I turned my head to the side. “Stay put,” the voice said.

  It was light tenor and I knew who had me pinned to the gravel next to Garth’s motor home. Eddy McBride.

  “Well, girly,” he said, “we meet again. Find anything interesting?”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “You?”

  He giggled, a merry sound, obviously enjoying our reversal of fortune. If he was happy about it, fine by me. As long as he didn’t shoot at me again.

  “If you’ll allow me to stand up, we can talk about it.”

  He giggled again. “Seems to me, now, that the shoe’s on the other foot; I oughta keep you here for a while, just to teach you a lesson. So, what else have you learned from that sheriff friend of yours?”

  Raising my head a bit, I wiped some gravel off my cheek and said, “The cops think you killed Garth’s girlfriend.”

  That stopped the giggling. “Why would I do that?”

  “I didn’t say I believed it, I just said they do. I almost had her convinced to turn herself in when she ran off and somebody killed her soon after. And since you seem to be following me around lately, I was rather hoping you were there to see who snatched her.”

  He was quiet a moment, then said, “I was obviously watching the wrong person.”

  He let off the foot and kneeled down beside me to look me in the face. “I know your dad believes in my innocence; any chance you do too?”

  What was it about this gun-wielding, bumbling-around-in-the-dark, cross-dresser that would convince my shotgun-toting dad to trust him? That my dad trusted him, that Roxanne believed him, said a lot. So if Noah Bains and Roxanne Leonard thought Eddy was innocent, perhaps they were right.

  I spit out a piece of gravel and nodded.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, holding out his hand. It was slim and cool, and he easily levered me into a standing position. Standing, I towered over him. The bald spot in his graying crew cut was the same as when he’d broken into our house and taken a pot shot at me. This time, however, he was in a conservative gray suit and a skinny black and white shirt. A beat-up briefcase lay on the ground next to him.

  “Insurance salesman,” he said, amused at my perplexed face.

  “How’d you get into Garth’s motor home?” I asked.

  “I learned a lot of things in prison, not the least of which was how to use a set of jimmies. How’d you do it?”

  “I had a key. By the way, are you going to your wife’s funeral this Saturday?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, a little smile playing around his mouth.

  “You know the security will be tight. They’re going to be looking for you.”

  “Don’t tell your sweetheart I said so, but they won’t find me. You won’t either, so don’t try.”

  “If you’re referring to Garth, that slime bucket is not my sweetheart.” I thought I sounded a bit like Autumn and hoped it didn’t mean I would end up the same way.

  His light eyes crinkled merrily at the corners. “I should hope not. Patience always said you were a little dense when it came to men. I meant the sheriff, girly.”

  Opening my mouth to argue, I changed my mind. He was absolutely right. I had a bad track record.

  I closed my eyes, trapping the random thoughts swimming around my brain, looking for a sensible cohesive thread. “You knew it wasn’t a botched burglary.” When I opened them again, he was watching me with bland detachment. “But how were you to convince the police?” I was thinking out loud, mentally stacking logical blocks on top of each other. “A convicted felon, they’d toss you in jail and throw away the key. Leverage is what you needed, something which would get the press going and force the cops to pay attention. So you did Pin the Tail on the Donkey—namely me and my Caddy—even if it didn’t stick. Thank God it didn’t. But why involve my family? Why not just leave her where you found her and let the police sort it out? And what if the police hadn’t believed that I was innocent? Did you really think it was fair to frame me for killing your wife?”

  “Now you wanna talk about fair? I was framed for a murder I didn’t commit, spent twenty years in the pen, lost my wife and all that money she’d been holding for us, so don’t ever use that word in any conversation with me!”

  I backed up with each forceful declaration. “Okay, but did you have to use my Caddy?”

  “Why not? She was already dead when I found her. I tore that place apart looking for the money, but it was gone. That money was ours. It was all that gave us any hope at all. But Garth shows up, my wife is murdered, and I couldn’t say a damn thing about any of it, now could I?”

  I put out my hand, palm up. “Okay, fine. So how do you think you were framed?”

  “All right.” Eddy rubbed at the back of his neck, willing himself out of his bad mood. “Patience was Bill Hollander’s secretary. Every so often, Bill handed her a package of cash to put into the safe. He never considered she’d question where he got it. He just assumed that because she was shy and blond that she was also submissive. Well, he thought wrong. Sometimes she’d see pilots and other guys come into his office, Bill would give her the eye and close his door; something she said he never did otherwise. She told me a couple of cops came in and he’d do the same thing, and later they’d come out all friendly like. So there went our idea to report our suspicions. You don’t know this, but the only son Patience and I ever had died from a drug overdose, and she and I both came to the same conclusion—Bill Hollander’s drug smuggling had to be stopped. Then one day, she overheard a conversation between Bill and that pilot Bob Norquist. A shipment of drugs from Mexico was coming in. None of those crooks would ever see the inside of prison if somebody didn’t do something. I wanted to confront him, and she said we should wait, she’d think of something.”

  I interrupted. “What about the FBI or the FTA?—they’d be interested in international smuggling.”

  “We weren’t sure the suits coming out of his office weren’t some of those guys. I was so hot under the collar that I went to his office without telling her. Bill was already dead and the rest is history.”

  “Then where did the money come from that Patience had been hiding all these years?”

  “Patience was one smart woman. Just like always, he gave her cash for the safe. Only this time, she switched bags on him and brought it home. She was going to give it back to him the next day with a warning that if he continued to be involved with drug smugglers, she would go to the cops. Of course, she wasn’t counting on someone murdering Bill that night.”

  “Your lawyer told you to plead temporary insanity?” I asked.

  “Sure did, and ruined any chance for an appeal. I learned that in prison. That guy was a jackass. I might as well have defended myself—could’ve done better. I got framed for that murder, and if you turn me in before I can prove that Garth killed my girl, then they’ll throw me in the slammer and pin another murder charge on me. Not that it matters anymore. With Patience gone, I might as well be back in prison—or dead.”

  “Back to that night Patience was killed. You must have had help. Who drove you out to the ranch?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “A motorbike,” he said. “One of those useless little contraptions hanging off the back of a camper that says, ‘steal me.’ Thankfully, they’d left me a tank full of gas. I got there in time to see the damage that SOB had done to my poor girl. I promised Patience I’d get in a lick for her if it was the last thing I ever did. So I put the motorbike in the trunk of the old yellow Pinto she couldn’t drive anymore, and I drove out to your place. I took your Caddy, drove out to the main street, walked back, got the Pinto, then parked it in the orchard next to yours. From there, I took her out to the lake.

  “God, it was hard letting her go, wa
tching that water slide over her head. I used the motorbike to return to the Pinto. By the time I pulled into her carport, the sky was getting light. I guess I should apologize. I am sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you and your dad. Do you forgive me?”

  “I just wish you hadn’t felt the need to drown my Caddy.”

  “No one would’ve given it a second look if it was parked there all day, and the heat has been into the hundreds. Not a pretty thought for what she’d look like when the cops finally got around to checking it out.”

  “Why not leave her there where you found her, call it in and let the police figure it out?”

  Eddy giggled again, “And miss out on all the fun we’ve had? I can’t apologize for what I did. That’s when I thought of Noah. I was going to leave her in one of his airplanes, but worried he might not work Sundays, and remembered that Caddy of yours. It was better’n a big billboard with red tailfins.”

  “There was a pendant of Autumn’s found smashed in the door of my Caddy. How’d it get in there if she wasn’t involved?”

  “I found it in Garth’s RV the first time I saw her come out of his rig. I knew if I gave that girl enough rope she’d hang herself, I’m sorry to say. I didn’t know Garth would kill her, too.”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t come clean with me and my dad sooner. Maybe we could’ve prevented another murder.”

  His expression was exasperation mingled with amusement. “Girly, that wasn’t likely to happen. They’ll shoot holes in any story you come up with, too. There’s no helping me now. No, sorry, this way Patience will get her revenge, and so will I.

  “I’m leaving now,” he said, “before somebody watching decides to get nosy. Turn around,” he said, gripping me by the shoulder. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to tell them you saw which way I went.”

  I did as he asked, instinctively hiking my shoulders up to protect my neck. I waited. Nothing happened for a minute, then I could feel his breath close to my ear as he whispered, “Unlike Lalla Bains, some of us only get one chance to make things right. Don’t let the ones you love slip away; remember that, will you?”