It was almost eight when nearly everyone who had had any kind of a connection to the Packard was gathered in Carole’s Flower Shop. Rose and Angel were playing jacks on the floor in a corner, while most of the others had found places to stand, sit, or lean as they waited for the final invitee to arrive. Though most of them knew each other, it was not a comfortable scene. No one understood why the meeting was called, and each of them fidgeted as if they were standing outside the principal’s office waiting to find out what they had done wrong. None of them made eye contact with each other, and except for a few whispers between George and Carole, no one spoke. Thus, beyond the children’s play, the only real noise was the uneasy breathing of those waiting for the party to start.
Henry Reese, dressed in a black suit with white shirt and black tie, had spent enough time getting ready for this unique moment in his personal history to appear very much Hollywood’s prototype of an FBI agent. Unlike the others, who were tense, he was relaxed, casually leaning up against a display case that stood beside the front door. He seemed to sense that the final curtain call of Eleanor’s Grand Experiment was going to be very special indeed.
As the flower shop’s clock struck the hour of eight, Meeker glanced out the window. A single streetlight illuminated the 1936 Packard Beverly Coffman had driven down to Oakwood from her home in Wilmette.
“When are we going to get started?” Sheriff Jed Atkins asked. “Mabel doesn’t like to be left alone at night.”
“I was waiting on the arrival of another guest,” Meeker answered, “but I guess I can get started. Let me start by telling you I brought each of you here tonight because of a connection to that yellow Packard sitting on the street just outside this shop. It has made an impact on every life here in some way or another, and I believe it is going help us solve not just one but three crimes.”
Her eyes shifted from the sheriff, to Sam Johns, to Landers, who’d come up from Arkansas, to the Halls and Beverly Coffman, before landing on Henry Reese. She winked at her former partner, and then she shifted her gaze to the salesman from Arkansas. Landers reached up and rubbed his throat with his right hand.
“You have a question, Bill?” Meeker asked.
“You said three crimes? I thought there were only two.”
She nodded, spun on her heels, took a long look at the front glass, and then explained, “Everyone knows about the kidnapping. Everyone here also knows about the money that was stolen from Abbi Watling. But I think only one person in this room is aware that there was a murder.”
“A murder?” Sheriff Atkins’s voice was laced with a mixture of confusion and shock. “Are you talking about Abbi? I always had the gut feeling someone killed her.”
Meeker looked from the sheriff to the man standing beside him. Samuel Johns caught her gaze then diverted his eyes to the floor. He was really uneasy, and why not? This case would have been a lot easier if the attorney had just taken a closer look at the sketch of Burgess.
“Mr. Johns,” Meeker broke into the silence. She caught him and everyone else by surprise. “I still don’t fully understand why you didn’t recognize Burton, the man you knew as Burgess, from our sketch.”
The lawyer awkwardly shrugged. “I guess I should have. I just didn’t think he was capable of doing anything like that.”
“That shows bad judgment in at least two ways,” Meeker calmly explained. “I’d expect more from a member of your profession. As a member of the bar, I might be inclined to believe you were keeping quiet to protect yourself.”
“I’ve heard the gossip,” Johns shot back. “There are a lot of folks who seem to think I had a hand in the missing cash.”
“And,” Meeker continued, “even if you didn’t help plan her murder, you might have been after Abbi’s money. Even lawyers struggled in the Depression. The year Abigale Watling died was about as tough as any in the 1930s, so maybe you needed to get your hands on that cash. Janet Carson trusted you. It wouldn’t have been that hard to pull the wool over her eyes. And you seem to be a pretty big spender. That desk in your office probably costs more than most cars.”
“Are you serious?” the man roared. “How dare you question my integrity!”
She smiled. “Well, when I visited with you in your office you did expose something that would put any professional investigator on alert. It sure set off warning bells.” Glancing over at Reese, she paused.
As Meeker considered her next words, Johns was deflating like a balloon on a winter’s day, and though he surely wanted desperately to defend himself, he seemed at a loss for words. Finally he asked, “What did I say or do?”
“You knew which seat in the car the money was stored under,” she explained. “When we gave you that scrap of information, you told us it was the backseat that was uncomfortable. We hadn’t told you that our lab found the evidence in the backseat. We just said a seat.”
“But,” he argued. “I tell you I’m innocent.”
“We’ll see,” Meeker replied. She paused for a moment, her eyes falling on George and Carole Hall, before noting, “Of course it seems even more strange that a trained officer of the law like Sheriff Atkins missed indentifying Burgess.”
“I thought the sketch looked something like Mitchell,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t sure. I’d have looked stupid if I was wrong.”
“You look pretty stupid now,” Meeker solemnly noted.
“You know what many at the FBI are saying?” Reese added.
“Yeah,” the sheriff mumbled as he folded his arm. “Some folks in town are, too. They’re saying I worked with Burgess or Barton or whatever his name is and I took some of Abbi’s money.”
“It’s not that far-fetched,” Meeker said, “that you and an old friend like Sam Johns would be in this together. After all, you were the ones who supposedly searched the Packard after Abbi died.”
“I swear—” he said.
“Not right now,” Meeker cut him off. “Save swearing until your hand is on the Bible in the courtroom.”
The dinging of the bell over the door caused everyone to turn. Dressed in a gray coat, Janet Carson stepped in, clutching an envelope in her hands. Her gaze moved from person to person in the room until her eyes finally locked onto Meeker.
“Are you Helen Meeker?” Carson asked.
“Yes, I am,” Meeker replied.
“Here is what you asked for.”
As Meeker took the envelope, Janet unbuttoned her coat, revealing a nicely tailored olive-green suit that matched her pumps. She pulled the coat off her shoulders and laid it down on an empty bench.
“If you’re going to point fingers,” Atkins barked, “then you need to look at her.”
“Miss Carson?” Meeker asked.
“Yes,” he growled.
“Why?”
“Well,” the sheriff said, “she must have money. Look at the suit she has on. I bet it cost a pretty penny. Doubt if she could buy that on a schoolteacher’s salary.”
“But her aunt’s money was going to her anyway,” Meeker pointed out. “What reason would she have to take it?”
“Maybe she wanted to avoid paying taxes on it,” Atkins said.
Meeker cast an eye toward the late arrival before moving to the center of the room and pulling a small scrap of paper from her pocket. “The missing piece might be right here. It’s a phone number I found in the billfold of Mitchell Burgess. It’s pretty old, as you can tell by the faded ink and worn paper. But it was important enough that he kept it. Why?”
She gave the paper to the sheriff. “Does this number mean anything to you?”
He glanced at it and shook his head. “It’s not a local exchange.”
“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “For those of you who can’t see what is written here, does Jupiter 7-2673 mean anything to you?” No one answered.
“What about the rest of you?” she asked.
After a few moments of silence, Bill Landers spoke, “I know of a Jupiter exchange in Ohio, but it wasn’t that number.”
“That’s the problem we have,” Meeker noted. She took the paper back and waved it in the air. “Whoever wrote this number down didn’t add what city or state it was in. Since Burgess knew whose number this was, he didn’t need to record that information. Yet we need it. Without it, we can’t arrest the person that I’m pretty sure was behind the theft of the money from the Watling estate and the kidnapping.”
“It could have been Burgess working alone,” Johns interjected.
Meeker crooked her right eyebrow. “Do you think he was smart enough to do all that was entailed in this deal?”
“I don’t know,” the attorney admitted. “But to me, that is what makes the most sense.”
“Of course that’s what you want us to believe,” the sheriff snapped. “You’re afraid they’ll link this mess to you.”
“Jed!” Johns barked.
“Well,” the sheriff yelled, “if I didn’t do it, then you seem to be the next logical choice! You were Abbi’s lawyer. You knew about the money. Burgess worked for you after Abbi died. Your tie to him is stronger than anyone’s! Maybe our search was just to make you look innocent and throw suspicion elsewhere. Maybe you already had the cash safely tucked away. Maybe you knew that others knew about the money and you were just covering your trail.”
“I don’t know why I ever voted for you,” Johns shot back. “You’re an idiot!”
Meeker smiled, waved her hand, and cut the men off. “Let’s get back on track—what about the number? Does it mean anything to anyone?”
No one answered.
“Rose,” Meeker gently said, moving over to where the two children were playing. The little girl looked up. “You said that there was a second man who was involved in taking you. Would you stand up and look around this room?”
The little girl pushed up from the floor and took the agent’s hand. “You take a very close look at the men in this room. Are any of them the other man you told me about?”
Rose slowly moved her eyes from Atkins to Johns to Landers. After she studied each of them, she shrugged, “No, the mean man’s not here.”
The trio of men breathed collective sighs of relief.
“Of course,” Meeker said, “there could have been a third man—the brains behind this deal. So you men don’t need to relax too much yet.”
“That leaves me out,” Atkins barked, “because everyone here seems to think I’m stupid.”
Meeker wryly smiled before turning back to the little girl. “What did you tell me the man looked like?”
“He was kind of fat and frowned a lot. He had a whiny voice. He was not as old as those men.”
“That could be a hundred people I know,” George noted.
“Yeah,” Johns added. “That description fits several people I’ve represented. We could go to Danville and see ten people who fit that description in five minutes.”
Meeker nodded in agreement. “And because I don’t know where the telephone that goes with this number is, the one Mitchell Burgess had in his billfold, I can’t connect a man fitting that description to this number. And besides, it might not even be a working number. I’ve called it in every Jupiter exchange in about a dozen different states and have gotten nothing. The office is still checking the states I haven’t called.”
“So this is a colossal waste of time,” Atkins growled. “I’m going home.”
“Not yet.” Reese held up a hand to stop the man.
Meeker motioned for the agent to talk privately outside. They stepped out the door. It was time to up the stakes.