by Dan Kelly
I decide not to pry into his sister’s medical problem and instead ask, “What do you know about the Crusader that you think will lead to you getting the reward?”
“I know what kind of car he drives and I have his license plate number.”
“How do you know it was the Crusader’s car?”
“I’ve seen his picture on TV a lot and the other day when I was riding my bike from school to the luncheonette I saw him driving out of the bank parking lot and memorized his plate number until I could get off my bike to write it down before I forgot it.”
“We’ve been assuming that the Crusader has been wearing disguises because his picture has been plastered everywhere. I’m surprised he wasn’t wearing one when you spotted him.”
“He was wearing sunglasses and a Washington Nationals baseball cap when I first spotted him. He had pulled up behind another car waiting for a break in traffic to pull out onto the street. While he was waiting for the car ahead of him to pull out he took the glasses and cap off to rub his nose and brush his hair with his hand. It was his hair that made me take a closer look otherwise I would have ridden right on by and never given him a second look. His hair looks like a skunk’s pelt or a zebra’s coat, black with wide white streaks.”
“Why didn’t you call the police right away with this information?”
“Hey, this guy shoots anybody he thinks is his enemy. I figured the police will get this guy sooner or later without my help so there’s no need for me to stick my neck out just for some money. When I found out about my sister though that changed everything.”
“Okay Timmy. Do your folks know about this?”
“No, I didn’t want them to worry about my safety. They have enough worries with my sister.”
I’m beginning to like this kid. He’s got guts and he cares about his family.
“Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. You give me a description of the car and the license plate number and while you’re sitting there and listening to every word I say Im going to call the FBI agent I’ve been working with and give the information to him and tell him where it came from so he’ll know who should get the reward if it leads to the Crusader’s capture. Fair enough?”
Timmy doesn’t answer right away. He just stares at me like he is trying to see inside my head to see if I am telling the truth or not. Finally he says, “If things go the way we want them to, how long will it take for me to get the reward?”
“I’m sure we can speed things up enough so you can get medical help for your sister ASAP.”
“Okay. He was driving a 2012 spruce mica Toyota Tundra pickup that looked like it just came out of the showroom. The license plate number is EH – 8562 and it has one of those special antennas on the roof of the cab for transmitting and receiving all kinds of frequencies.”
“What a come down. The guy used to drive an Audi S7. And what’s spruce mica and how do you know about it?”
“I know a lot about trucks and cars. It’s a shade of green like the spruce tree. Now, please call this FBI guy now. I’m supposed to be on a field trip with my class at school and I snuck away to come here. I want to get back before my teacher notices I’m not with the group.”
“Okay.”
I call Don, put him on speaker so Timmy can hear both sides of the conversation and then introduce Timmy to Don and tell him about Timmy’s concern about getting gypped out of the reward. “Don, we might have finally caught a break.” I relay what Timmy has told me and Don says, “Thank you for coming forward, Timmy. I know this guy is kind of scary and it took courage for you to approach Mr. Dawson. Don’t you worry about getting the reward. It’s yours if this leads to putting an end to this man’s killing frenzy.”
“Thank you sir.”
Don says, “I’ll run the plate through the data base and see what turns up and see that the police departments within a hundred mile radius get this info right away and ask them to issue BOLOs ASAP.” Click.
“Thanks for your help Mr. Dawson. The next time you come into the luncheonette you’ve got a triple decker pistachio cone waiting for you. I know that’s your favorite.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Timmy splits and I reach for my phone again to call Janet. This time no one comes into the office who wants to talk with me. “Hi Chet.”
“Hi Janet. How are you feeling his morning?”
“A lot better. Thanks for asking. Where do we stand on the TV interview?”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m calling. It’s a go at six tonight on Fox News and Agent Millhouse managed to poke the journalist rumor mill, so things should go as planned.”
“Great. What are the other reasons you called?”
“There’s only one other. We caught a break out of left field a few minutes ago.” I tell her about Timmy Ryder’s visit and what Don’s in the process of doing with the info Timmy gave us.
“Chet, that pickup has to be a rental or a used one he bought using an alias and phony ID or someone’s name whose identity he stole or the truck itself was stolen. Aldrich is just too cautious to leave a trail that easy for us to follow by using his own name. From what I’ve learned about the Aldrich’s, he normally drives an Audi and she drives a Cadillac Escalade.”
“You’re probably right, but if that car is spotted anywhere it will attract cops like a picnic does ants. Hopefully, Aldrich will be behind the wheel or somewhere nearby. For the moment, it improves our chances of catching him. Of course, he can always change his ride.”
“It would be nice if things went down that easily, but this guy is extremely lucky and very smart, so I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Do you have any plans for dinner tonight?
“I haven’t given it any thought.”
“Tonight’s my mom’s last night in town and she wants to coddle me one more time before she leaves with a home cooked meal and she’s a fabulous cook. I haven’t a clue about what she’ll be serving, but it’ll be good I know that. Would you like to join us?”
“A culinary surprise is a lot better than the ones the Crusader has been throwing at us. What time and what kind of wine does your mother like? I’ll bring a white and a red so we’ll have all bases covered.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes I do if I want to make a good impression on your mother.”
After a slight pause Janet softly says as if someone is close by and she doesn’t want them to hear, “You want to impress my mother?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Laughing she says, “A word of warning, climbing Mt. Everest would be easier than impressing my mother. She sees ulterior motives in everything. Mr. Dawson, do you have an ulterior motive?”
“Oh yeah.”
Laughing even harder she says, “If you come over sometime between five-thirty and six we can watch Ericson’s TV debut together.”
“I’ll be there. Bye.”
Yeah, the lady definitely has gotten to me.
Chapter 34
At a quarter to six I’m knocking on Janet’s door and when it opens I’m staring at a tall stunning looking woman with thick wavy gray hair down to her shoulders. “Chet Dawson?”
“That’s what it says on my birth certificate and you must be Mrs. Vanderhill.”
“That’s not what it says on my birth certificate, but I answer to it and also to Gloria if you wish.” Smiling, she steps back away from the doorway and says, “Please come in. Janet will be with us shortly.”
I hand her the wine I brought and say, “One’s a malbec and one’s a chardonnay. The chardonnay is still cool, but it would be best if you put it in the fridge to keep it chilled.”
I follow her down a short hallway into the living room where she motions to a wet bar and says, “Although I’m an experienced sipper, I’m a lousy bartender. Help yourself if you’re in the mood. Janet has a nice variety of goodies, so I’m sure you’ll find something to your
liking. There’s beer and mixers in the fridge below the wet bar. I’ll have a vodka gimlet if you’d be so kind.”
She heads for the kitchen with the wine, leaving me to rack my brain over how to make a vodka gimlet. I’m a Newcastle beer or a Bushmills on the rocks kind of drinker, so when it comes to mixed drinks I’m an ignoramus. Fortunately, a vodka gimlet is the only mixed drink I’ve had some experience with because an aunt of mine used to drink them and she taught me how to mix them and I luckily remember the recipe.
I find the Grey Goose vodka, the Rose's Lime Juice Cordial and an appropriate cocktail glass and after filling the glass almost to the top with ice cubes I pour two shot of vodka and one shot of the mixer into the glass and gently stir the concoction.
I opt for a double Jameson’s on the rocks and sit down in one of the easy chairs to wait for Janet and Gloria to join me. Gloria returns first and sips her drink. “Ah! That’s good. You’re my kind of bartender.”
“I’m glad you like it and I’m glad you asked for it and not something else because it’s the only mixed drink I know how to make. I’m one of those uneducated deprived drinkers. If I can’t pour it directly from a bottle, I’m lost.”
“How refreshing, pun intended. Self-effacing humor in a man is hard to find these days. You must be something special for my daughter to invite you to dinner at her home. This is a first as far as I know.”
“MOTHER!!! A somewhat flustered Janet has just joined us.
“Oh Janet, don’t get your dander up. It’s a God given right for mothers to be nosy where their kids are concerned. I’m just trying to get to know your dinner date better.”
“It’s not a date. If it were, you wouldn’t be here.”
With a raise of her eye brows and a smile Gloria says nothing which has a greater impact than if she had.
With a cautioning tone in her voice Janet says, “Knock it off, Mom. Chet and I want to watch the news at six o’clock. It’s has to do with something he and I are working on.”
To change the subject I ask her if she wants something to drink from the wet bar and she declines saying, “I don’t want to mix the medicine I’m taking with alcohol. There might be serious side effects.”
“That’s a shame. I brought some nice malbec and chardonnay. The guy at the liquor store said it would delightfully intoxicate our pallets. That sounded like an interesting experience and I wanted to share it with you.”
Laughing she said, “Well, maybe a few sips wouldn’t hurt me.”
Looking at her watch she says, “It’s five after six. I’ll turn the TV on so we can watch Don cast his line for the barracuda we’re trying to land.”
Looking at her daughter kind of strangely and then glancing at me Gloria says, “You’ve picked up some odd ways of expressing yourself lately. Where’s that coming from?”
“Shush, we want to listen to the news.” Glancing over at me she smiles and then focuses in on the TV screen. I’m having trouble focusing on anything but Janet. She’s not dressed in her going to work garb this evening, but in an off the shoulder burgundy cocktail dress which ideally accents her dark wavy auburn hair that’s caressing her shoulders and the matching burgundy heels make those long legs of hers look even more impressive. On a scale of one to ten she’s at least a twenty.
The interview doesn’t commence until midway into the broadcast and after the anchor does the lead-in Don comes on camera and he looks professional, relaxed and ready to go. It was prearranged with the news director for Don to read a prepared statement, Janet’s script, before the questioning begins and he does so accompanied by a surprisingly believable flourish of histrionics that has me wondering where he found the time to practice those moves. When Don finishes reading his statement, the anchor weighs in with a series of loaded questions designed, I believe, to rattle and/or anger Don, but Don fields them easily with a few barbs of his own thrown in for good measure to let the anchor know, I’m sure, that he won’t just sit there and let her use him as a verbal punching bag.
The anchor has clearly done her homework and has prepared and structured her questions with the hope of catching Don off guard and getting him to say something that he would probably regret later, but her tactic didn’t work and, to me, when the interview was over she looked like the one who was rattled and angry.
She might be angry, but I think the network bosses are going to be ecstatic because they scooped everyone else with the ‘latest developments’ in the Crusader investigation. Don did an excellent job of selling our scheme to the viewers and we hope Aldrich was one of them.
Gloria, who has been watching the broadcast with us notes, “That FBI agent sure knows how to get his point across and his presentation of the information in that prepared statement was a heart stopper.”
Looking at Janet who was shaking her head I couldn’t help myself and did some bragging for her. “Your daughter wrote that statement. She’s more than a top notch journalist. She’s also a very talented writer and in my opinion could be a best-selling novelist if she chose to make a career change.”
“Oh, not you too! She started writing short stories, novelettes she use to call them, when she was in junior high and her English teachers encouraged her to pursue a writing career, but I managed to talk her out of it when she entered college and she decided to major in journalism.
“A good journalist can make a good living if he or she is in the right media market. Most novelists, no matter how good they are, never make much money.”
Giving me a cold stare Janet says, “Can we change the subject. It’s ancient history as far as I’m concerned and I’ve moved on to other things.”
Way to go Dawson. You certainly stirred up a can of worms with that big mouth of yours. She tried to warn you off, but you ignored her.
“What’s for dinner, Mother?” Looking at me she says, “She’s barred me from the kitchen because she wants to surprise me.” Looking back at her mother she says, “So surprise me, Mom. I need some cheering up after that short trip down memory lane. What epicurean adventure are you taking us on tonight?”
Oh boy. I think I’ve opened some old wounds. Why can’t I learn to keep my big mouth shut?
“To start off with we’re having Barbecued Shrimp with Ginger and Lime. It’s one of Wolfgang Puck's recipes. It’s usually served as an entrée, but I elected to use it as an appetizer. The main dish is Chicken Makhani which is also known as Indian Butter Chicken and will be served with basmati rice and naan bread. And for dessert we’re having peach cobbler. It’s on the sweet side, but I figure we can live on the wild side once in a while.”
Janet’s looking at her mother as though she’s tripping out on something and says, “Well, you’ve certainly managed to surprise me. I’ll be eating salads for the next week, but this sounds like it will be worth it.”
The food is a new experience for me and I’m enjoying every morsel of it. As the meal progresses, the tension between mom and daughter seems to dissolve and by dessert they're talking and laughing about all kinds of things that have happened in their family since they’ve last seen each other
Realizing that I’m being left out of their conversation Janet says, “I’m sorry we’re being so rude. We only get to see each other three or four time a year, so we have a lot catching up to do when it comes to what we’ve been doing and what’s been happening with my family and relatives. They’re an off the wall bunch that’s for sure and they do a lot of crazy and often hilarious things.”
“Hey, don’t give it a second thought. It’s been like being in a dinner theater for me and I’m enjoying the show.”