by Traci DePree
Steve began to examine the wooden dummies. Paul didn’t utter a word. Kate glanced at him, and he offered her a tentative smile as she squeezed his hand.
“Wow,” Steve said, obviously still in awe.
Paul bent to study the nearest dummy. She had the same features as the first mannequin that Eli had discovered—the refined lines, the high cheekbones and thin eyebrows painted on, the same feminine figure. Kate moved alongside him.
Three of the mannequins had the same markings and hidden compartments with bags of money stashed inside, while two did not. The two looked different in the face as well, less art deco and more plain in appearance. There was no engraving on their feet like their wealthier sisters, either.
Kate lifted confused eyes to Paul. “I wonder why these are different?”
“Beats me,” Paul said, pursing his lips.
Steve bent to pick up a bundle of the vintage cash from the torso of one of the mannequins.
“Wow,” he said. “What an awesome find.” He turned his attention to Kate and Paul, who sighed.
Kate moved alongside her husband and touched his shoulder. He shook his head and reached for Kate’s hand.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, the defeat in his voice unmistakable. Kate understood his reaction. The hope he’d been holding on to—that the rumors about his grandfather would prove false—was a popped balloon. Shattered in his hands.
Kate tried to comprehend the implications of such a find. Yet no honorable explanation came to her. Stolen money, brought in canvas bags and locked in Horace Hanlon’s basement, had been hidden in a room that he must have created for this very purpose, in the very mannequins he’d carved with his own hands. How could it be anything but what it appeared? A hiding place for stolen funds.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Two days later, the Copper Mill Chronicle ran a story on the find. Kate groaned when she saw the pictures of the opened mannequins on the front page when she came into Phillip’s store.
The headline read: HANLON’S BOUTIQUE WAY STATION FOR STOELN GOODS.
“When will it all end?” she said when she realized the rumor mill had reached the reporter, and she in turn had found Steve Smith.
Phillip moved alongside her and read over her shoulder.
Steve Smith of Smith Street Gifts couldn’t believe his eyes when he along with Faith Briar pastor, Paul Hanlon, and his wife, Kate, discovered a veritable warehouse of mannequins stuffed with cash in a hidden room off his basement last Tuesday. Much like the find of several weeks ago by antiques dealer Eli Weston, these carved wooden mannequins were reported to contain thousands of dollars taken from a bank robbery at Pine Ridge’s Merchants National Bank in 1930 by noted gangster Jack Leonetti.
The article went on, but Kate had read enough. She sighed and pushed the paper away.
“How is Paul taking the find?” Phillip asked as he took a sip of steaming coffee.
“Do you really want to know?” she said.
Phillip nodded.
“It’s discouraging,” she began, “to have the whole town think your grandfather was a crook and that the money they worked so hard to give our church was from illegal activities.”
Kate turned to him and realized she hadn’t really looked at him when she’d come in. There was something new, a spark in his eyes maybe? She took a step back to study him.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked.
“Nothing. What? A guy can’t have a good day?”
Kate shook her head. She knew Phillip better than that. There was more here.
“All right,” he finally conceded. “I did some soul searching...”
“About?”
Phillip’s gaze flicked to the window above the front door for just a moment before returning to Kate. “About what you said.” He took a deep breath. “About Ginny and not closing myself off.”
Kate waited, sensing he had more to say.
“I asked Lila out on a date. We had dinner on Tuesday.” He looked at the floor.
“You what?” Kate tried to contain her surprise.
Phillip blushed. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, okay?”
“I’m so happy for you.”
“It was a date, Kate. I didn’t propose or anything.”
“And?”
“And...if you and Paul want to go out for dinner next week, I’ll ask her out again.”
AS KATE WAS SWEEPING UP at the end of the day, still thinking and praying about Lila and Phillip, Connie Rae Loggins finally returned her call. The woman sounded ancient and frail, and her voice quavered with each word.
“Now who is this again?” the woman said. “Why do you want to meet me? Do I know you?”
“No, ma’am, you don’t know me,” Kate said. “I wanted to talk with you about your father.”
“My father? You knew my father?” She turned to talk to another person in the room, but exactly what she said was muffled. “Sure, I’ll talk to you,” she came back. “What’s this about?”
“It’s about the book your father wrote,” Kate said. “About Jack Leonetti.”
There was a long silence on the line. “What do you want to know about that?”
“I’d just like to ask you a few questions,” Kate assured her. “What’s your address?”
LIKE HER YOUNGER SISTER, Connie Rae had thick white hair, though instead of a ponytail, hers was twisted into a bun in back of her head. Kate watched through a window in the top half of the door as the elderly woman shuffled to answer Kate’s knock Friday morning, another toasty spring day. Connie Rae’s shoulders were hunched, and a shawl rested across them.
She eyed Kate through the window before pulling the door open.
“You’re Kate Hanlon?” she said as a blast of conditioned air cascaded out of the house.
“I am.”
“Haven’t I been reading about you in the paper these past few weeks?” She narrowed her eyes to study Kate, and Kate felt unnerved by the woman’s stare. “My sister says you talked to her too.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t Suzanne answer all your questions?”
“Maybe,” Kate agreed, “though I’ve learned that it never hurts to get two perspectives. From what your sister said, your father was a pretty remarkable man.”
The woman seemed to consider that. Then she opened the door wider and led Kate to a dark-paneled living room with rust-colored 1970s furniture wrapped in clear-plastic slipcovers. The couches looked as new as the day they had been purchased. Shades were drawn against any possibility that sunlight might intrude, so lamps next to the chairs and couch were turned on.
Connie Rae motioned toward two avocado green La-Z-Boy chairs. Kate settled into one as the other woman took its mate. Parakeets in a large, white cage across the room chirped their greeting and fluttered their wings. Connie Rae ignored them, turning instead to Kate.
Kate smiled at her, hoping to keep the woman’s obviously frayed nerves intact. In many ways, Connie Rae reminded Kate of those nervous parakeets.
“Like I said on the phone,” Kate began, “I was wondering what you remembered about the Leonetti bank robbery in Pine Ridge.”
“It was a bank robbery,” she said simply. Connie Rae met her gaze as she shifted in her chair.
“It must’ve been pretty traumatic, considering that your father worked there.”
“Sure it was,” she admitted.
“How old were you then? If you don’t mind my asking,” Kate said.
“I was born in 1915,” she said, forcing Kate to do the math.
“So you were fifteen.”
The woman didn’t even nod.
“Did your father talk about the robbery?”
“He wasn’t much of a talker.” She paused and, turning toward the opening to the next room, called, “Harry...!”
A few seconds later, a man poked his head around the door. He looked to be years younger than Connie Rae, though he too had a wrinkled face; he had a thin mustache and jet black h
air that was greased back. If Kate hadn’t known Connie Rae’s husband was named Harry, she would have thought him to be her son.
“Can you get us some sweet tea?” Connie Rae asked.
“Okay.” He disappeared back into the next room.
“You know”—Connie Rae turned to Kate, lowering her voice as she spoke—“there were a lot of rumors going around about my father back then—none of them true.”
“Such as...?”
The telephone started ringing but stopped after a single ring. Kate could hear Harry talking in the next room.
Connie Rae glanced toward the door as if looking for Harry, then said in a low voice to Kate, “For example, they said he had helped plan that bank robbery, but no one ever proved that. The police snooped around our house...” She clutched a wrinkled hand to her chest. “My poor mother was terrified!”
“But nothing ever came of it?”
“No. But people can be so mean. Our family lived with that stain until my parents both passed.”
Kate recognized the truth of her statement.
“So did Horace Hanlon,” Connie Rae added.
Kate was pulled up short by the comment.
“You knew Horace Hanlon?”
“He was a friend of my father’s. He used to come by the house when I was a teenager.”
Kate was stunned. “What was the nature of their friendship?”
Connie Rae shrugged as if she didn’t understand the question. “They talked...”
“Did they do business together? That kind of thing?” Kate’s mind twisted with the turn of events.
“I was a teenager,” Connie Rae said, sounding tired. “I have no idea what they did behind closed doors.”
Just then, Harry returned with a tray that held two tall glasses of sweet tea and a plate of rich pastries with a shell pattern on their rounded tops.
“Who was on the phone?” Connie Rae asked.
“Your grandson.” Harry had a vibrant, full voice, and he met Kate’s gaze with a dip of his head.
“What did you tell him?” Connie Rae’s eyes darted to Kate.
“That you were busy.”
“Good.”
“He said to let him know when a good time would be.”
Connie Rae nodded, then Harry left the room again, and the two women sipped tea and ate cookies in silence.
“These are delicious. What are they called?” Kate asked, though she kept thinking of Horace.
“Conchas,” Connie Rae said. “It’s an old family recipe.”
Kate nodded.
“I hope you understand,” the older woman said as she straightened in her seat. “This isn’t my favorite subject.”
“I apologize.”
“No, no,” she insisted with a kind smile. “You had no way of knowing.” She took a long sip of her tea. “My father was an amazing, intelligent man. People didn’t always appreciate that, but I saw it, and, of course, that proved true in his dealings on Wall Street. He could take a simple idea and turn it into a profitable business with a snap of his fingers.” She snapped her own fingers.
“Your sister said he retired in the 1940s?”
“He did,” Connie Rae said. “He’d made his money by then.”
“That’s remarkable,” Kate said, “given the state of the economy in those days. And for someone so young...”
“Some people are gifted at business, and some aren’t.” The woman took another bite of the concha. Kate sensed a less cynical spirit in Connie Rae than her sister. She had clearly loved her father regardless of any of his shortcomings.
“Do you have any pictures of him?” Kate ventured as she set her glass on the small table between them.
“Of course.” Connie Rae rose and shuffled to a hutch along the back wall, opening a drawer and rummaging through it for several long minutes.
Kate tasted another cookie and followed the bite with a long drink of tea.
Finally Connie Rae returned, holding a photograph out to Kate. “It’s my parents’ wedding picture.”
Kate studied the photo for a long moment before handing it back. It was a typical early twentieth-century wedding picture, but the couple looked to be far from happy, given it was their wedding day. Roy Simmonds was a tall, thin man with bushy eyebrows, while his wife was shorter and heavyset. Kate hadn’t seen the couple before, but she took careful note to memorize their images.
“Thank you,” she said. “They’re a lovely couple.”
Connie Rae touched the surface of the photograph reverently before placing it on the table between them.
“Did you have any other questions?” she asked.
“Yes,” Kate said. “Do you know anyone with the initials W.M.?”
The elderly woman wrinkled her brow and looked suddenly offended, as if Kate had crossed an invisible line in the sand. Connie Rae stammered for a moment, then pursed her pale lips into a line.
“It doesn’t ring a bell,” she finally said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kate went from Connie Rae’s straight to the Mercantile to pick up a few needed groceries before heading home. She meandered through the overstocked aisles, greeting folks she knew, though she was distracted by thoughts of her time with the elder Simmonds’ daughter.
Both of the Simmonds sisters had been visibly shaken when she’d asked who W.M. was. Kate thought of their odd behavior—Suzanne asking if Kate was related to Leonetti, and Connie Rae’s offended expression and stammering reply.
Kate also thought about Roy’s retirement. It was a small detail, but it still felt odd to Kate that Roy could have retired so young—especially as a banker. Had the sisters told the truth that Roy had simply struck it rich with his investments at a time when banks and the stock market had plummeted? Or were they covering for their father, who, although he’d been cleared of all charges of tax evasion, went on to write a book about hiding money from the authorities? And Leonetti had spoken of the man before robbing the Merchants National Bank. That revelation glared most of all.
The heat of the day assaulted Kate as soon as she left the air-conditioned mercantile. She’d thought Texas could be hot when she’d lived there, but this summer was proving that Tennessee could be just as cruel.
She’d just placed her bags in the passenger’s seat of her Honda when she noticed a slip of paper tucked under the windshield wiper. Kate glanced up and down the street, wondering if someone was putting flyers on all the cars. But there was no one in sight. Hers was the only car with the note.
That was odd. She pulled the paper from beneath the wiper and unfolded it. The words inside were written in block letters, all capital letters. It read: YOU TOOK WHAT WASN’T YOURS. GET IT BACK FROM THE BANK OR BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. YOU’VE SEEN WHAT I CAN DO. YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.
A chill spread across Kate’s back. She glanced up and down the street again. Two teenaged girls were exiting Emma’s Ice Cream Shop next door.
“Excuse me.” Kate approached them. “Did you see someone leave a note on my car?”
The girls looked confused. “No, ma’am, we didn’t see anyone,” one of them said. The other girl shook her head.
Kate thanked them, then went back to her car. No one was there, but as the teenagers walked away, she felt a strange sense that someone was watching her. She thought of the bald man with the limp. She turned, almost expecting a glimpse of him, but the street was still empty.
Kate climbed into her car and drove toward home, her hands shaking as she gripped the wheel. She watched in her rearview mirror the whole way.
Paul was in his study when she came in.
“Paul,” she said when she reached the room. Her hands were still shaking.
“What’s up, Katie?” He must have heard the fear in her voice because he turned concerned eyes to her.
She held out the note for him to read. “This was on my windshield.”
He took it, and she began to pace.
A moment later, Paul set th
e note down on his desk and pulled Kate into an embrace.
She closed her eyes and allowed her breathing to calm her.
“Father in heaven,” Paul began while he held her. “We need your protection, comfort, and wisdom to know what to do. This is getting too big for us. Whoever is doing this...show us, Lord. Please show us.”
When she opened her eyes, he said, “We need to show this to the police.”
THE EXPRESSION ON SKIP SPENCER’S FACE reflected the concern Kate had seen in Paul.
“He sure is getting desperate,” the deputy said. His brow puckered in thought. “We’ve been trying to locate every W.M. in the county. That lighter with the initials is the only bit of evidence we’ve got.”
“You might want to talk to Connie Rae Loggins and Suzanne Simmonds,” Kate told him.
A line formed between his eyes. “And why is that?”
Kate told the officer about her visits with the two women who were descendants of the very man whose bank had lost the money in the 1930 robbery. She also mentioned the biography Roy Simmonds had written about Leonetti and Simmonds’ second book with the suspicious title, and his indictment on tax-evasion charges. Skip whistled low and ran a hand through his red hair.
“When I asked both women if they knew who W.M. was,” Kate went on, “it was clear that they were hiding something. Both denied it, but the question made them very jumpy.”
Skip pursed his lips, then wrote their names on the notepad he held in his hands.
“I’ll pay them a visit,” he said. “But in the meantime, you need to be careful, Mrs. Hanlon.”
“You might want to let Steve at Smith Street Gifts know too,” Kate said. “In case this guy thinks there’s more money to get at there.”
“I’ll take care of it. And to be on the safe side, I’ll make sure a squad car comes by here once in a while, to check up on you.”
A WHILE AFTER THE DEPUTY LEFT, Kate stood at the sliding-glass doors in her living room and gazed out at the darkening sky. Two deer fed at the edge of the yard, a mother and her fawn. They were peaceful, lowering their heads to nibble at the grass, then startling at the slightest sound. Kate held a glass of cold tea in her hands and sipped at it.