CHIEF PETTY OFFICER LEONARD JONES, Junior, U.S.N. Retired, mowed his lawn astride a green and yellow lawn tractor as Lorna and I pulled up into his drive. He wore khaki shorts and blue deck shoes without socks. White block letters on the back of his dark blue T-shirt announced something about “iron men and wooden ships.” A blue ball cap—crimped at the crown with the edges of the bill folded down like fenders—perched over his dark aviator sunglasses.
“Matty told me you had low friends in high places,” said Lorna as she pushed the shift lever into park.
“Sounds like an accusation,” I said.
“You found this guy in one phone call.”
“A shot in the dark,” I said. “I called the VFW in Whitmore Lake. He turned out to be a member.”
“Oh?” she said, with a little arch of her eyebrows and tilt of her head.
“So why are you and Special Agent Matty Svenson chinning about some old fart PI?”
“She did my National Agency check and I told her that I was going to work for you until my class date came up.”
“She have anything nice to say?”
“Told me to get rid of the Walther and buy a nine millimeter.” Lorna twisted her keys out of the ignition.
Jones’s gray brick ranch included an attached two-car garage. The garage door stood open, revealing two stalls with everything in its place. Several sets of scuba tanks hung on the back wall, and a folded hang glider hung from the rafters. An electric-green crotch rocket lurked next to a “write-me-a-ticket red” Humvee—the kind with canvas doors and zip-out plastic windows.
“Your lucky day,” I said, “another eligible guy.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Psychic impression,” I said.
The retired Navy type pulled up and shut off the tractor. I opened the car door and stepped out.
“Leonard Jones?” I asked.
He pulled off his sunglasses and drilled suspicion into my face with cold, slate-gray eyes. “Yeah, and you?”
I stuck my hand out. He took it and held on. “Art Hardin,” I said. I relaxed my hand and arm. Leonard brushed back my jacket with the leg of his sunglasses and exposed my auto loader.
“You look like a cop,” he said and scanned my Western livery. “But not from around here. You with Naval Investigative Service?”
“Nope.”
“You were in the military,” he said.
“Yep.”
“Marines?”
“Army. I couldn’t suck my face into the mayonnaise jar.”
He laughed, let go of my hand, and knocked up the bill of his cap with his knuckle. Lines at the corners of his eyes and a little gray at the temples punctuated an otherwise young and clean shaven face.
“Some kind of trouble?” I asked.
“I said some ugly things about the chain of command.”
“Oh.”
“In the Navy Times.”
“You’re retired,” I said.
“I was with the teams. They still come steal my trash twice a year.”
“If what you said was ugly enough, we can go have a beer.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” he said. “What the hell do you want?”
“I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for Anne Jones.”
“I don’t have a sister.”
I looked him in the eyes and nodded once. “Thanks, Chief,” I said. “Pleasure to meet you. I gotta go.” I kept my hand to myself and turned back toward the car.
“If I had this sister, why would you be looking for her?”
I turned back. “An old flame from her college days wants to know if she’d like to do lunch.”
He looked at Lorna.
“That’s my partner, Lorna Kemp.”
He laughed. “How is she at watching your back?”
“So far, so good.”
“You find this sister I don’t have and you just give up her whereabouts?” he asked.
“I give her the name and address. Any contact is up to her.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I took the “Ben Wright, Mid-West Casualty” pretext business card out of my breast pocket and handed it to him. “I haven’t lied to you yet,” I said.
He chuckled. “This phone number any good?”
“Answering service.”
“How come you didn’t use it?”
“Pretty sure it wouldn’t work.”
“Come on in the house,” he said. He stepped off the tractor and walked toward the open garage door—five foot ten or so of kiln-fired brick with double-fist calf muscles. Lorna got out of the car and followed me up to the house. He held the door open, and we stepped into his kitchen. The walls were pale yellow, the kitchen table and chairs white wicker. The table had a glass top. He waved us toward the table.
“I was expecting a field table with jerry cans for stools,” I said.
“My ex did the decorating,” he said. “Have a seat.”
He took the telephone off the wall, wedged it between his chin and shoulder, and punched in the number off my pretext card. “Yeah, I want to speak with Ben Wright.” He opened the refrigerator door and crouched to look inside. “He is?.… Sorry I missed him.… No.… I’ll call back later.”
He reached into the refrigerator and produced three bottles of Vernor’s Ginger Ale racked between his fingers, bumped the door shut with his hip, and set the drinks on the table. Back on the telephone, he drilled in another number and returned to the table.
“This is one of the things I missed most,” he said. “Only place in the world you can.… Yeah, this is Leonard, I want to talk to Anne.… Her brother.… I want to leave her a number for an old college friend who wants to get in touch.”
He picked up one of the bottles, twisted off the cap, and set it in front of Lorna. Lorna stared at the lip of the bottle and then at me—the top was not the twist-off variety.
“Look, just leave her the message.… Then just tell her to call me.” His face went blank, and he took the handset off his shoulder and stared at it like Lorna had stared at her drink. He went over and hung up the telephone.
“Houseman,” he said on his way back to the table. He sat and opened the other two bottles. “One of these days I’m going to drive out there so that we can discuss his manners.”
“I’m a little confused,” said Lorna.
“So am I,” said Leonard, “and I know the whole story.” He turned to look at me. “Tell you what,” he stuck his hand out, “give me one of your cards—a real one—and write the name and number of this person. I’ll see that she gets it.”
I fished a card out of my ID case. Leonard watched me write the name and number on the back of the card.
“That’s the guy?” he said.
I clicked the pen and put it away. “That’s the guy,” I said and handed him the card.
“I saw him on TV. The guy with the electric paint—turn the dial and make your car any color you want.”
“Light and Energy Applications.”
Leonard took a big slug of his Vernor’s, washed it around his palate, and chewed it like a piece of steak. His eyes went narrow. Finally, he swallowed and looked at me.
“There was some whiz-kid who followed her around like a lovesick puppy at State.”
“That’s the one.”
“Fancy that! I’m sure she’d remember him. Don’t know if she’d want to talk to him.”
“If she’s married, my client feels that it would be best not to intrude.”
He gave me a wry smile. “Not married. I’ll give you her address.”
“I’ll tell her you said hello.”
“Tell her she has a niece and two nephews who’d love to hear from her.”
Leonard leaned back in his chair. “Tell her my door is always open. She doesn’t need an invitation. She doesn’t need to knock.” Lorna started to squirm in her chair.
“Write her a note. I’ll give it to her.”
“I’ve written several times,” he said, “the letters came back unopened.” He looked at his watch. “Not like it’s really that far. Want to go for a ride?”
“Sure.” I said. “Where are we going?”
“South Haven.”
“Let’s go,” I said and swilled the rest of my Vernor’s. Lorna left hers half full.
“We can take mine,” he said. “I don’t think either one of us will fit in the back seat of that little yellow thing you drove up in.”
“Great,” I said, “I always wanted a ride in one of those. They came into service after I left active duty.”
“Great,” Lorna said, but her tone wasn’t what I would call joyful. She took the shotgun seat to avoid the gale from Leonard’s unzipped window. The noise from the diesel engine would have drowned out the radio if Leonard had thought one was necessary. The suspension was tight and after every jolt Lorna turned to look evil at me. The Humvee filled the lane and lumbered around on the expressway as we headed west toward the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
“So why did you say that Anne wasn’t your sister?” asked Lorna. She had to raise her voice to be heard.
“She was adopted,” he yelled back. “Broke my parents’ heart. Dad’s gone now and my mother moved out to the cottage at Whitmore.”
Lorna looked at me and then back at Leonard. “Well, even if she were adopted,” said Lorna, “she was still, you know, like your sister. You certainly seem to care a great deal about her.”
“Oh, she was my parents’ natural child. She just decided to be adopted.” He drove on in silence for a moment and went on, “My ex says that I have to respect her choices. My mother says that she decided not to be my sister.”
Lorna closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked at me. I shrugged. She turned her attention back to Jones and patted the wide console between the front seats. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said.
“Mr. Jones,” I said, “it really doesn’t matter to us. We wanted to speak with Anne. If the rest is—personal?” I fixed Lorna with a hard stare. “There’s no need to pry.”
“Look over there,” he said, and pointed to a lake surrounded with million-dollar homes. “Frampton Lake. It’s only eight or nine hundred acres. The housing development around it is called Frampton Lake Estates, used to be the Frampton family farm, but it made a pretty poor farm—mostly sand and gravel. When they built this expressway, old man Frampton made a fortune selling sand and gravel to the government. When they finished the road, most of his farm was a hole filled with water. He subdivided the part that wasn’t underwater and made a bigger fortune. Most of the Framptons are gone now, just two heirs to the fortune—Anne and Shelly Frampton.”
“Your sister is a lesbian?” Lorna asked, making it sound like a statement.
Leonard shrugged. “Anne’s an artist, Shelly claims to be a patron of the arts. They met up at State. Shelly taught veterinary science. They were both active in politics.”
No one could call the ride silent, but nothing more was said until we arrived in the city of South Haven. Leonard pulled into a supermarket and parked.
Lorna said. “Your sister is Anne Frampton, the sculptor? Anne Frampton, who did the stainless steel sphinx in front of the Amway Pyramid.”
Leonard said, “I’ll be right back.”
Lorna staggered out into the parking lot and took stock of the vehicle. I fled for the gas station next door to use their facilities. Twenty ounces of iced tea with a ginger ale chaser doesn’t ride well on a stiff suspension.
As I passed Lorna, she said, “I’m never buying one of these.”
“You’re going to love them in the jungles when you’re tracking down smugglers and dope growers.”
“That’s just in the movies.”
I didn’t stop to argue. When I got back, Leonard had already returned. He’d placed a paper sack on the rear seat opposite mine. I looked inside and found a smoked picnic ham.
“Soup bones for the soup hounds,” he said.
“I guess this isn’t your first trip.”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“What’s going on?” asked Lorna.
“It appears that the Framptons are less than cordial hosts.”
“Wouldn’t a bottle of wine be a little more appropriate?”
“Not if you’re a dog,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, but the lights didn’t come on.
“Under the passenger seat, there’s a tackle box,” said Leonard. “There’s a knife inside. I think we should unwrap our yard warming gift.”
Nestled among some road flares, a compass, and some freeze-dried meal packages I found a Marine-issue reconnaissance knife in a metal sheath. Razor sharp. I liberated the ham from the shrink wrap and dropped it back in the bag. The scent of hickory smoke wafted through the truck. Considering my lunch, I was envious of the dogs.
The Frampton residence turned out to be a rambling stone mansion located on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. A twelve-foot stone wall surrounded the property, and an iron gate guarded the entrance to a quarter mile of blacktop drive.
Eight acres of neatly trimmed grass and carefully tended shrubbery surrounded the house. Just inside the gate stood a small stone house. Between the wall and the house a little girl with shining raven hair and dark cautious eyes studied us from her swing as we pushed the call button on the intercom mounted on the fence. She was barefoot and wore red cotton shorts and a floral cotton blouse. She pumped away on her swing and summoned her “Papa” in sing-song Spanish. A gruff male voice crackled out of the intercom.
“Who is it and what do you want?”
“Interstate Express,” I said, “I have a package for Anne Jones.”
“Just leave it with the gardener at the gate house.”
“It has to be signed for.”
“The gardener will sign for it.”
“Anne Jones has to sign for it.”
“He’ll write whatever you want.”
We heard a click, a hum, and then silence until a telephone rang inside the house near the gate. A small man—Hispanic with a sparse moustache, carrying an eight- or nine-month-old baby with a finger in her mouth and a pink T-shirt that didn’t quite make it all the way to her diaper—exited the house and walked out to the gate.
“You have a package?” he said as he surveyed the three of us and took stock of the now-greasy paper grocery bag in my hand.
“I want to see Anne Jones,” said Leonard.
“You should go. In the house they don’t like visitors.”
“Anne is my sister, and I need to see her.”
“They can see the gate from the house. You should go. This can only be some trouble. They don’t want no visitors.” Up near the house a motor started. “Go now, and hurry.”
He turned away like we were insane. Fright in his eyes, he hurried over to the child on the swing and seized her by the hand. A black and silver Dodge Ramcharger gunned away from the house and headed down the drive toward the gate. The gardener hustled into the house with his brood.
“That’s probably Hemmings,” said Leonard. “Best back off the gate a step or two.”
Hemmings loomed over the steering wheel. The top of the windshield obscured his face above the eyebrows. He pulled up to the gate and jammed the shift lever into park with an angry uppercut. Three one-hundred-pound brindle mastiffs with spiked collars preceded him out of the truck and charged the gate set on full nasty. They managed to get their heads a full foot and a half on our side before the bars stopped their massive chests and shoulders. The wrought-iron barrier groaned in its tracks as the dogs drove against it.