by Bill Hopkins
Chapter 33
Sunday Night, continued
Jill's appearance failed to elicit a response from either Rosswell or Ollie.
"Cat got your tongue?"
Rosswell said, "I haven't seen a cat. Have you seen a cat, Ollie?"
"Jill, all I know is you sure took off like a fraidy cat, leaving us locked in a closet."
"The closet wasn't locked." Jill filled Rosswell's coffee cup. "You guys don't know how close you came to dying." She slid a large slice of apple pie in front of him, then did the same for Ollie. "I baked this pie from apples I peeled."
Rosswell said, "Maybe you'd like to tell us why you exposed us to mortal danger."
Mabel hollered from across the restaurant, "Jill, station five."
"I'm busy, but let me sketch it for you. My friends came over to see me. While we were in the front yard, Turk and Nathaniel drove by and fired a couple of rounds. We took exception to that so we gave chase. Then the fire started. The bad guys got away. I had to make sure it was okay to be seen in public before I showed my face. Gotta go. Customers."
Rosswell and Ollie watched Jill take a few more orders before Rosswell said, "That's the biggest crock of crap I've heard since the gray goose ate granny's grackle." He shoveled a couple of bites of pie into his mouth, closing his eyes and chewing. "Hmmmm."
"Goose? What goose? Why would a goose eat a grackle?"
"It's an old saying in my family. My grandma said it all the time."
Ollie said, "I wonder who these friends are that Jill is so proud of?"
"I think she has imaginary friends." Rosswell patted his mouth with the napkin. "But I'll ask her."
Jill glided by their table. "I get off in two hours. We'll talk."
In what passed for Mabel's office, yet another conference on the situation took place after Jill ended her shift. The single light bulb hanging from a wire nailed to the ceiling had blown out. With a lot of complaining and groaning, Ollie climbed up on a rickety stepladder and screwed in a fresh bulb. It was a new-fangled "green energy" contraption that took fifteen minutes to warm up to the point where it could shed a milky luminescence, fainter than most stars.
Rosswell seated himself in a wobbly wooden chair behind a tiny desk strewn with papers. "Who are these friends of yours that you're so proud of?" The dust in the air made him sneeze.
Jill looked around, apparently searching for a chair. "I don't know." She found a plastic soda carton, upended it, and sat.
Ollie stood the whole time. "You hang around with strange men? You'll get in trouble if you hang around with strange men. Present company excluded."
She wiggled around on the carton. "I think they were undercover agents or spies or something."
Spies? Undercover agents? In Sainte Genevieve? Rosswell perked up. This could be interesting. Or maybe cause Gustave to carry Jill to the mental health center. She sounded paranoid enough to keep Ollie silent.
"And," Rosswell said, "what were they spying on?"
"Not spies. They were law enforcement of some kind. CIA. FBI. IRS. Homeland Security. TSA. USDA. FDIC."
"Lots of federal cops running around these days. It's hard to tell who's chasing who."
The gaffe roused Ollie from his silence. "Whom."
Rosswell bit his tongue, then loosened his teeth when it began to hurt. "Tell us about the cops from the unknown agency."
"They wouldn't tell me their last names, only their first names. One was tall with square shoulders and eyes popping out like he had a thyroid problem. The other one was shorter. His hair was cut down to practically nothing and he wore a jewel stuck in his earlobe."
"A diamond earring. Philbert is his name. The tall one is Theodore."
"Yeah, how did you know?"
Rosswell briefly explained how he'd met up with Theodore and Philbert one week ago, the day he'd seen the body tossed into the river. He didn't tell Jill a lot of the details, including the Farmington conversation with Philbert. He still didn't trust her. "Where did you meet these two?"
"Right here. This restaurant."
"Convenient. Let's go see those two gentlemen." Maybe they'd moved to different lodgings in Farmington.
Jill shook her head. "They left. Something about bigger fish to fry."
Ollie angled toward Jill. "You've been hoodwinked. Those two were a couple of con artists. They sniffed around for awhile and couldn't find any money to steal so they left town."
Jill puckered her lips into a pout. "You don't know that."
Rosswell thought that it was not beyond belief that con artists could become auditors for the federal government. It had happened before. He made a mental note to discuss with Ollie in private the huge number of con artists working for the government.
Jill continued her defense of Theodore and Philbert. "They saved my life."
Rosswell deposited a load of full attention on Ollie. "Why do you think they're con men? Why couldn't they be the secret police?"
"We don't have secret police in this country."
"You're kidding, right? Answer the question."
"Rosswell, you're acting awfully judgmental." Ollie took his turn to pout. "Let's see. If they were cops, they would've busted Nathaniel's baby selling ring. That's illegal, you know. That's pretty big fish to fry. The headlines would look great. If they were really cops. I think we need to contact the state cops. Gustave's so crooked they'll have to screw him into the ground when he dies."
"I'd imagine that the state fire marshal will investigate the fire." A good reason to bring Jim Bill on board. I'll make some calls. Rosswell needed to ask Jill more questions. "Did you see Nathaniel shooting at you?"
"No." She reached into her purse for a lipstick. "I heard gunshots and Theodore said that he and Philbert both had seen Nathaniel shooting at me." She applied the lipstick without consulting a mirror. Rosswell admired women who could do that. Without help from his car's rear-view mirror, he had trouble finding his face when applying lip balm, and usually wound up with a healthy smear on his chin.
"I hate to be the one to defend that rusty-haired son-of-a-bitch, but he was nowhere around." Ollie leaned even closer toward Jill. "Theodore and Philbert wanted you to trust them. What better way than to create a fake threat on your life and then rescue you from it?"
Jill backed away from Ollie. "It wasn't fake."
"Another thing I need to know is who was helping Karyn deliver the baby I saw from the passageway. You were going to tell me before Theodore and Philbert arrived."
"Susannah Acorn."
"Gustave's daughter?" Ollie's eyes grew wide. "Frankie Joe's wife?"
Rosswell said, "I suspected Frankie Joe and Susannah were in on this. Frankie Joe's story about what happened on the ferry was too cut and dried. Gustave gave him a script to read which was supposed to divert attention away from him, his daughter, and son-in-law. Didn't work."
"I told you my sister was the bad girl here. Karyn wants to keep helping Nathaniel because she's making good money. Gustave is a rotten bastard. He and Nathaniel are in this up to their breathers. I want to see those two in jail."
"Jill." Rosswell stood and grasped her hand. "Listen to me. There's only one thing I care about right now. You must tell me the truth. Where is Nathaniel hiding Tina?"
Jill's weeping made him fear the worst, that Tina was dead.
Ollie said, "This is not the time for tears, sister."
She rubbed her cheeks with the heels of her palms. "Damn it, Ollie, I'm not your sister."
Rosswell steeled himself. "Answer the question. Where is Nathaniel hiding Tina?"
"She's not in Sainte Gen. She's not even in the United States. She's in Brazil."
"What's she doing there?"
"She's a prisoner on a baby farm."