Another late night. Before Jimmy and I left the Mantz household, Ian explained that Silke, the only fluent German-speaker in the family, had years earlier translated Gunter’s journals into English and given each daughter a copy. Mine were copies of copies, blurred and faded, but as complete as those that would one day be handed down to his grandchildren. Still, I planned to keep a sharp eye out for any interruptions in the narrative flow that might indicate a page had been removed.
Back home in my apartment, I propped myself up in my Lone Ranger bed and began reading. Like many journalers, Gunter turned out to be a pack rat, saving any printed snippet that captured his attention, so the first box I picked up not only contained journal entries dating from the Sixties, but a host of newspaper clippings ranging from comic strips to news items. Overwhelmed, I put that box aside and picked up another, and was happy to see on top an entry dated August 28, 1945, soon after Gunter Hoenig’s marriage to Eva Schmidt, the girl who saved his life. As I read, I realized that by then, the escaped POW had already assumed the identity of Gerhardt Mantz, a cousin of the Schmidt family who had immigrated from Germany before America entered the war. The real Gerhardt Mantz had moved to Alaska to look for gold in the bush, then disappeared. Despite a search by officials and a few relatives, he was never found and was given up for dead. It was Eva’s father who told Gunter to take this long-lost cousin’s name.
To my disappointment, the journal said little about Camp Papago or Gunter’s few months on the run. However, it did detail his fear of being discovered and hanged as a spy. After the Reich surrendered and the war with Germany ended, his tone lightened and for a few entries he wrote hopefully about emerging from hiding. But with the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials and the revelations of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps, he changed his mind. A one-line entry dated December 4, 1945, said:
I am ashamed to be German.
A few pages later, next to Gunter’s own handwriting, he had saved a clipping of an Associated Press article dated Dec. 17, 1945. It detailed some of the items entered into evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. One of them was a lampshade made of tattooed human skin.
Gunter’s note, scratched in the margin, said, Germany has become a land of ghosts.
He never mentioned his homeland again.
The next few years contained entries about work, making new friends, his happiness at becoming a naturalized American citizen—albeit under an assumed name—and his sorrow that he and Eva could not seem to have children. Then I came across an entry dated, July 14, 1946.
Today Gerhardt Mantz is a father! This morning, my beloved Eva gave me a beautiful son. We have named him Ian. The doctors say Eva will have no more babies, so we will wrap our Ian in a blanket of love large enough to cover ten. If only my good friend Josef, along with his wife and child, were all here to toast the future with schnapps. We would sing until dawn.
But I guess I will never see Josef again. Like me, he probably abandoned Das Kapitan. I pray he made it back to Germany to be with his own true love. But wherever he is, may the good God be with him.
Ernst did not appear again in Gunter’s journal until June 12, 1978. In an entry at the bottom of the page, he wrote:
Kapitan still lives. This can not be allowed. I remember Joyce Bollinger’s eyes pleading with me, my failure…
I flipped to the next page only to find out that the sentence remained incomplete. Had someone removed the page? The next few pages were not only out of order, but were interspersed with more newspaper clippings that didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything, other than to display Gunter’s own wide interests. I leafed through them in increasing frustration until I struck pay dirt about three-quarters of the way through, where—stuck to the back of a recipe for Sachertorte—I found a Darien, Connecticut, newspaper clipping dated May 12, 1978. It had a photograph of Erik Ernst receiving an award for his design of the STL-42 racing sloop. Did someone send this to Gunter, or did he discover it on his own?
If memory served, Ernst had his boating accident in June of 1978. I resolved to check my case notes the next morning. Just a few pages away from the newspaper clipping was another journal entry. This one had me shaking my head in amazement.
September 5, 1988
Too late I have learned you can not save someone from himself. I have tried to help Joyce Bollinger’s one surviving child. I believed that since there have been miracles in my own life—my beloved Eva is the greatest among them—so why could there not be miracles in his?
But my efforts have been in vain. The troubled boy I tried so hard to help has grown into a bad man. He was cruel to his first wife, and now he is cruel to his second, and even his little girl.
It is time for me to turn away from him.
Joyce Bollinger, I have failed to save your son, just as I failed to save you. May you and the good God forgive me.
A few more entries, all out of chronological order, showed that for almost three decades, whenever Chess Bollinger screwed up, Gunter had picked up the pieces. Hiding behind fictitious names, Gunter bailed Chess out of jail again and again and in some cases even paid his fines.
Then the journals ran out of steam. From the drama of Chess’ messed-up life, they shifted to family matters. One entry bragged about Gunter’s new son (no date, but I figured it had to be in the Sixties), one rhapsodized about his wife (She grows more beautiful each day!), and one mentioned Ian’s new wife: Huong is amost as beautiful as my Eva, but in a different way! Bored nearly to tears, I read about Gunter’s granddaughters (God has blessed me!), and the advent of two great-grandchildren who—according to Gunter—were the most beautiful and brilliant children to ever grace the earth. Tolstoy said that happy families were all alike, but he left out the part about them also being boring. Now Gunter’s familial happiness was putting me to sleep.
Disappointed, I tried the last box and, to my delight, saw that these pages were more organized. Going straight to the last entry, I found one dated September 14, 1999, a brief paragraph about a trip he and Eva planned to take to Edmonton, Canada, to visit her sister, who was in failing health.
A man may pass, but his family endures, Gunter wrote in that last entry. His words proved prophetic.
The next page—obviously added as a eulogy by someone other than Gunter—was a copy of a short clipping from the Calgary Sun, dated September 26, 1999.
“Huh!” I sat back on my pillows and began to think. Why would a man of such advanced age as Gunter Hoenig—who must have easily been in his eighties—drive all the way to Canada? If his sister-in-law was ailing, why not simply fly? Then I remembered that earlier the same year, Gunter ran into Ernst at the German-American club. Had Ernst, seeing that his old crew member was alive and well, suspected Gunter had driven the boat that crashed into him and threatened to go to the police? Perhaps the visit to Canada wasn’t meant to be a mere visit. Perhaps it was a final hiding place, and as such, Gunter had wanted to haul along family mementos that he didn’t dare leave to the mercy of the U.S. Postal Service.
It made sense. But a jackknifed truck destroyed all of Gunter Hoenig’s carefully laid plans.
As I continued to search through the box, I found several loose items: a copy of the couple’s obit from the Arizona Republic and some “Humor in Uniform” columns from Reader’s Digest. Smiling, I leafed through Gunter’s amateurish drawings: submarines that looked more like Bratwurst than U-boats, improbably structured horses, cats, dogs, birds and even children—or maybe they were Christmas elves; it was hard to tell. Indeed, Gunter’s drawings were rough enough to verge on the abstract, and at times I could hardly tell if their subjects were animal, vegetable or mineral. Now I understood the reason for the clumsy oil paintings in Ian Mantz’s house; filial love was blind. I studied the drawings, wincing at Gunter’s attempt to capture nature with a less-than-talented eye. For a few minutes I tried to decipher one particularly wobbly piece, then finally gave up and looked at my clock. Two forty-six a.m. I was in for another red-eye morning.
My prediction proved to be accurate, but Gunter Hoenig’s journal wasn’t the reason.
***
Saturday dawned clear and crisp, but halfway through Fay Harris’ funeral, the skies clouded over again. Kryzinski stood stoically through the graveside service, even though his eyes grew more alarmingly hollow with every word the minister spoke. Fay’s co-workers at the Journal provided a chorus of sobs. Many of the journalists looked not only sorrowful but frightened, as if they were worried about the enemies they might make covering their own beats. Warren, who’d returned from L.A. on the red-eye, stood beside me. From the way his hands were shaking, I wondered briefly about his own relationship with Fay, then dismissed the thought. He’d liked and respected her, that was all. As for me, I was so overwhelmed by grief and guilt that I could only nod when Warren asked me to lunch with him on the set.
When the service ended and I finally made it back to Desert Investigations, I tried to work, more convinced than ever that the Bollinger, Ernst and Fay Harris killings were all connected. Outside the office, the usual hordes of tourists strolled Main Street, but this time I’d taken the precaution of keeping the lights off. There was still enough light coming through the picture window to work in, but depressed, I just sat there for a while staring off into space. Instead of trying to work, I should probably have taken Warren’s advice and followed him over to the set.
Finally rousing myself from my guilt-induced stupor, I called Information and got the phone number for the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Police Department. Knowing that police forces everywhere were open on Saturday—a popular day for mayhem—I called and asked for Sgt. Carmine Aliessio. The receptionist informed me that Captain Aliessio had retired the previous year, but she helpfully put me through to his replacement. Captain Homer Swayze listened to my story, told me the files on the Ernst case were probably in storage somewhere “across town,” but that he’d call his pal Carmine to see if he was interested in talking to me. Figuring I’d reached a dead end, I gave him my phone number, said that Aliessio could call me collect, and hung up.
To my surprise, Aliessio called me mere minutes later. He was as forthright as retired cops can be, no longer having to worry about bureaucratic red tape or manipulative defense attorneys. “So somebody finally nailed the bastard? Ha! Second time’s a charm.” His voice was hoarse but chipper, as if he’d been waiting a long time for someone to talk to. Through a connection so bad that it hissed, I thought I heard a TV in the background, tuned to a game show.
“I take it you didn’t think the incident in 1983 was an accident.”
A laugh. “You think right. The witnesses said the Chris Craft headed straight for him and never once tried to turn.”
“I’m surprised you remember it so well after all these years.”
“It’s hard to forget a double amputation on the water. Ever worked one?”
I informed him that while some areas in Arizona had man-made lakes big enough for power boats, Scottsdale didn’t. “Messiest thing I ever worked on the job was a seven car pile-up with a loaded cattle truck.”
He laughed. “Maybe I should come out to Arizona, see the sights.”
When I told him we didn’t have many cattle truck pile-ups anymore, what with the widened freeways and all, he sounded almost disappointed. “Oh, well. Guess I’ll have to keep watching Jeopardy for my fun. Anyway, back when Ernst had his ‘accident,’ we were all pretty sure it was an attempted homicide, but we couldn’t put a case together. When we interviewed his neighbors and co-workers, we found out the guy wasn’t exactly the King of the Prom, especially among the Jewish engineers, you dig?”
I told him I dug.
At that point, my office door opened and Jimmy walked in. I was surprised to see him, thinking he’d be out looking for houses or furniture on a Saturday, but he waved away my questioning glance and settled himself in front of the computer. I turned my attention back to Captain Aliessio.
“Beats me how Ernst made it over here after the war, but I guess the Navy figured it could use his expertise, which they did,” he was saying. “You know, like the rocket people used Von Braun. Nice, huh? All those Nazis getting fat off the American dime? Anyhoo, during our investigation, we turned up a few interesting items in Ernst’s apartment.”
Aliessio was enjoying this, stretching out the conversation as long as possible. I decided to hurry him along. “Anonymous letters, perhaps?”
He whistled. “As a matter of fact, yes. Six. All singing the same song. Whoever wrote them was convinced Ernst killed some Arizona family named Bollinger back in the Forties. We checked and found out that the surviving Bollinger son went to trial for the killings. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when the jury let him off, the prevailing belief was still that he’d done it. How’m I doing so far?”
“You’re doing fine, Captain.”
“Your guys get letters, too?”
“After the trial, the sheriff’s office received quite a few. I’ve placed a call to one of the deputies who worked on the case to see if he heard about anything else.”
We were both silent for a moment, listening to the crackle of the telephone connection between Connecticut and Arizona. The sound of fate following Ernst across the continent?
Aliessio broke the silence. “Regardless of what we let the press think, we never believed it was some stoner kid taking a joyride in a stolen boat. When we asked around the marinas, we did get a couple of leads, but they never went anywhere. One woman said she saw a stranger eyeing a nearby Cigarette Top Gun, but when he saw her watching him, he walked away.”
“Did she give a description?”
“Only that he was thin, looked sun-burned, and was on the up side of fifty.”
The up side of fifty. I caught myself holding my breath and forced myself to exhale slowly. “You said you had a couple of leads. What was the other one?”
“Some rich kid sunning herself on the deck of her daddy’s big old Hatteras-T-DD. Rough life for the privileged, eh? Anyway, she said some guy walking past asked her where the head was. Only he called it ‘the gentleman’s room,’ which she found pretty funny.”
He was going to make me ask. “Description?”
“Old and skinny. And…”
Lord deliver me from bored, retired cops. Maybe Aliessio should move to Harry Caulfield’s Apache Junction trailer park for a little action. “And?”
The satisfaction in his voice oozed through the hissy line. “She said he spoke with a German accent.”
I slammed my hand down on the desk so hard Jimmy looked around to see what was happening. “You okay?” he mouthed.
I waved him back to his computer. “She was sure the accent was German, not Swiss or something else?”
“Oh, yeah, she was sure. Seems Daddy had business interests in Berlin and sometimes took his family along with.”
Life having a finite chance for coincidence, I guessed that whoever had written the sheriff’s office after the Bollinger trial had to be the same person who’d written the Bridgeport police. I told Aliessio so.
He agreed. “Sure makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does.”
He cleared his throat. “That kid, the one they put on trial out there. What happened to him?”
When I told him, Aliessio grunted. “Before I let something like that happen to me, I’ll eat my gun.”
I remembered Chess Bollinger’s vacant eyes, his wife’s malignant smile, the dingy nursing home where Lysol couldn’t quite disguise the smell of decomposing flesh. If I kept going the way I was going, who would be around to care for me?
“I’m with you there,” I said.
On that note, we ended the call, and after asking Jimmy why he wasn’t out house-hunting and receiving a none-of-your-business look, I went back to work. Harry Caulfield still wasn’t answering his phone, so I left another message. But as soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. I looked at the caller I.D. and was pleased to see that Harry Caulfield had returned my call. He’d probably been in the shower.
But I was wrong. The man on the phone identified himself as Detective Manuel Villapando with the Apache Junction Police Department. His voice was cool, with absolutely no inflection. A bad sign. “You just left a message on Harry Caulfield’s answering machine. Would you mind telling me what you were calling him about?”
I’d been around long enough to recognize a police investigation in progress. “Why do you want to know? Has something happened to Harry?”
“Were you close?”
Were. All my happiness at having Warren back in town dissipated. “Mr. Caulfield is helping me with an investigation.”
“And that was?”
“Please. Tell me what’s happened.”
“Mr. Caulfield was found dead in his residence this morning. He appears to have died some time last night.”
If Harry was dead, why could I still see him with his eyepatch and pirate smile, his trailer with its life-affirming sign, If The Double-wide’s A-rockin’, Don’t Come A-knockin’? Now two people involved in the Ernst investigation were dead—first Fay, now Harry. Reminding myself that professionals don’t cry, I cleared my throat. “I take it his death wasn’t natural.” Cops didn’t sound as cautious as Villapando when someone keeled over from a heart attack.
Villapando side-stepped my question. “Ms. Jones, are you going to be at your office for the next few hours? I’d like to send someone over to…”
Forget that. I owed Harry. “Detective Villapando, are you at Harry’s trailer now?”
His voice turned cautious. “Yes.”
“I’m on my way.” I slammed the phone down, and after a brief explanation to Jimmy, ran out the door.
***
I arrived at the mobile home park at the same time as Harry’s friend, Frank Oberle. The trailer was taped off, but that hadn’t kept a large crowd from forming.
“Jesus, Jesus,” Oberle muttered as he hauled himself stiffly from his battered Ford Contour. The grocery sacks sitting in the passenger’s seat were testament that he’d been out shopping. When he saw me, his face flushed with rage. “You! This is all your fault!”
He teetered forward, his knobby finger stabbing toward me. “Why’d you have to get him involved in all this shit again? You see what’s happened, huh, don’t you?”
I shielded my face from that accusatory finger. “Mr. Oberle, I didn’t mean…”
To my relief, the door to Harry’s trailer opened and a dark face peered out. “I take it you’re Ms. Jones.” The man spotted Oberle, who was about to wrench open the Jeep’s door to get at me. “Don’t get physical with her, Frank, or I’ll have to take you in.”
I noticed that I was “Ms. Jones,” but Oberle was “Frank.” They knew each other. Well, Apache Junction was still a relatively small town. “Are you Detective Villapando?”
“The same. You can come in for a minute as long as you don’t touch anything.” Then, to Oberle, “You wait outside. You don’t need to see this. I’ll come out and explain things as soon as I’ve finished with Ms. Jones here. In the meantime, why don’t you go put your groceries away before they spoil. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Fortunately, Oberle did as Villapando suggested, so I hopped out of the Jeep and followed the detective into the trailer. The sea of crime scene techs parted, leaving me an unobstructed view of the mess on the floor. At first, the scene before me made no sense. Harry lay on his stomach, surrounded by what appeared to be blood-spattered snow. After a closer look, I realized the “snow” was feathers, probably the remnants of a ghetto silencer, which was nothing more than a pillow draped over a gun to baffle sound. Gang-bangers and mobsters sometimes used this method because it was cheap and more or less effective.
Villapando’s voice brought me back. “What kind of weapon do you carry, Ms. Jones?”
When I opened my carry-all and showed him the .38, he didn’t ask me to take it out. No surprise there. Judging by the amount of blood and feathers in the room, the murder weapon was probably something more along the lines of a 9-mm, like the gun that took Fay down.
Villapando gave me a severe look. “I checked you out.”
“Of course you did.”
He gestured around the room with a brown hand. “You have any ideas on this?”
I told him everything, with the exception of my visit to Ian Mantz/Hoenig and the existence of Gunter Hoenig’s journals. Maybe I would part with that information later, maybe not. For now, there was no point in dragging the Mantz family secret into this. “There were a couple of things I needed to get more information on from Harry, that’s why I kept calling,” I finished up.
“Such as?” Villapando stared at me like a scorpion eyeing a centipede.
“Such as the anonymous notes accusing Ernst of murder, which supposedly turned up not long after Chess Bollinger’s trial. I wanted to ask Harry if the notes were still around, and if so, could he arrange for me to take a look at them.”
“To compare them to the notes in Connecticut? We can help you with that.”
I doubted it. Villapando would probably keep any information he discovered to himself. Unlike Captain Kryzinski, he owed me nothing. Then again, I didn’t owe Villapando anything, either.
Which he knew. “So you think whoever killed the reporter is the same person who killed Caulfield?”
“Probably. Your ballistics people can confirm it.”
He gave me a wry smile. “Probably.”
Time to lay my cards on the table, although I knew it would net me nothing. “Detective Villapando, I’ve shared with you. Now share with me.”
He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, he confirmed my suspicions about the lack of cooperation I was likely to receive from the sheriff’s office. “There’s not much I can tell you at this point. Pending autopsy, I’d say Mr. Caulfield was killed sometime late last night, but no one heard anything other than a couple of backfires, which they’re now certain were gunshots. No one saw anyone arrive or leave. No one knows if Mr. Caulfield had enemies.”
Or maybe the residents of the trailer court didn’t feel like talking to the police. One thing this case had taught me was that for all their seeming frailty, the elderly can be as wicked as the rest of us.
Since I had nothing more to add, Villapando dismissed me. As I turned to go, he added, “You’re not planning to leave town, are you?”
“I seldom do.” Especially now that I would soon be the only employee at Desert Investigations.
As I reached my Jeep, Frank Oberle came back, this time on foot. “You!” The finger came up again.
Not wanting to get my eye poked out, I peeled out of there as fast as I could.
***
“Did you forget something?” Warren, crackling over a bad cell phone connection.
I’ve always hated people who talk on their cell phones while speeding along the freeway, but I was so eager to blot the scene at Harry’s trailer out of my mind that when mine rang, I’d answered immediately. Something else to feel guilty about.
“Forget what?”
“It’s one-forty-five. You were supposed to meet me at the set for lunch at one.” He sounded furious.
The semi next to me blared its air horn at a dogging Infiniti, nearly making me jump out of my skin. “Sorry. I…I got caught up in something.” Phone pressed to ear, I edged over to the exit ramp, Warren nagging at me all the while. The light was with me, and after hanging a right, I pulled to a stop in a Dairy Queen parking lot. The aroma of overcooked chili dogs wafted from the building, merging with the odor of automobile emissions. As it usually did when I was upset, my stomach rumbled.
Warren continued to rant. “Where are you? I hear traffic.”
“I’m at a Dairy Queen outside of Apache Junction, off I-60.” I flashed back on what I’d seen in Harry’s trailer. So much for putting it out of my mind. “For your information, Harry Caulfield’s been murdered. I was at the crime scene, talking to the cops.”
“Caulfield? Isn’t that the guy…?”
“Frank Oberle’s friend. The guy with the eyepatch. You met him the day he came out to the set to keep Frank company.”
A silence. Then, “Lena, I don’t think you should be involved in that case any more. In fact, I want you to pull out.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said. Quit the Ernst case. Now.” He sounded less like a prospective lover than a Hollywood director used to being obeyed. The tiger showing its true stripes?
I spoke carefully, not wanting to provide a spectacle for the gaggle of teenagers lined up at the Dairy Queen window. “Did you just give me an order?”
“Of course I did. You either give up that case or I’ll…”
“Or you’ll what?” I could hear my teeth grind as cars rushed past. No one tells Lena Jones what to do. No one.
“Or…or…” He paused, as if aware of what was about to happen. “Baby, I…”
Baby? The guilt and stress of the past few days rose up, and I snapped, “Cut the Hollywood crap, Warren. My name’s Lena, not Baby. And if you want to continue this ridiculous conversation, you’ll have to call me later.” Like in twenty years.
Ending the call, I stashed the cell back in my carry-all. Then I shut the Jeep off and joined the teenagers in line. Maybe a chili dog would erase the memory of Harry Caulfield’s bloody trailer.
***
Later that afternoon I was sitting on my cactus wood sofa, nursing my guilt and flipping back and forth in Gunter’s journals when a phone call rolled over from Desert Investigations. Jimmy had obviously left for the day. I picked it up and heard Beth Osmon’s voice.
“Jack came by this morning and told me he has to fly back to Mississippi on business.” She sounded pretty cheery for a woman suffering from a broken heart. “He offered me the opportunity to invest in a Tupelo shopping mall, so of course I wrote him a check.”
Of course? Jack Sherwood/Rinn was a scam artist who specialized in lonely rich women. I’d given her proof of that only the day before. “Beth, um, you’ll probably not see your money again. Remember what I told…”
“It was just a couple hundred thou. Here’s the deal, Lena. Since he’s given me a phony name and asked for money for a phony project, he’s now committed a crime and can be prosecuted. Right?”
The situation was more complicated than that. Since she’d given him the check in Arizona, prosecution should begin here, but since he was on his way back to Alabama, jurisdiction could turn into a snake’s nest. Not to mention the fact that the courts were backlogged already. However, I told her to go ahead and file a complaint with Scottsdale PD.
“That’s not enough. I want to confront him.”
Even though she couldn’t see me, I shook my head. “That’s never a good idea. We don’t know how violent he is. Remember, he’s probably been using false names all over the place, and simply because no one has lodged an official complaint against him doesn’t mean he hasn’t physically assaulted someone.”
“Which is why I want you to be with me.”
I stifled a groan. Did she think Sherwood/Rinn would be stupid enough to return to Arizona now that he had her money? “He won’t be coming back, Beth. He’s probably…”
She cut me off. “Of course he won’t. That’s why I went down to Scottsdale North yesterday afternoon and swore out a complaint. The police chief’s a friend of mine, so he’s expediting it. But I don’t want to see Jack merely prosecuted, I want satisfaction! Let’s fly out to Alabama and confront him there. In his home, in front of his wife. If she knows what he’s been doing, I want to prosecute her, too. For conspiracy. I want to see them all rot in prison.”
This woman scorned had enough fury for a bushel of them, and while I admired her spunk, I was less thrilled by the scenario she’d laid out. From what Eddy Joe had told me, Hamilton, Alabama, was a small town located more than ninety miles northwest of citified Birmingham, and as usual in small towns, Sherwood/Rinn would have deep roots there and a wide circle of friends. What good could such a confrontation do, other than give Beth a chance to vent? Remembering that the couple also had four children, I also wasn’t crazy about bringing Mrs. Sherwood/Rinn into the mix. What would happen to them if Mommy and Daddy both went to prison? If no relatives were available to take them in, they would wind up in foster homes. Given what I knew about some foster homes, I would rather see Alea Sherwood/Rinn go free, even if she was her husband’s partner in crime. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell Beth that.
“It’s really not…”
“I’ll triple what I’m paying you. Plus pay all expenses.”
I sat up straight. With Jimmy soon leaving for Southwest MicroSystems, Desert Investigations would be strapped for cash. “Uh…”
“Make that quadruple.”
If I held out a little longer, would she go quintuple? I decided not to chance it. “When do you want to fly out?”
“Tomorrow.”
Sunday? Oh, what the hell. There was little more I could do on the Ernst investigation until Monday, and Southern towns were supposed to be quiet on Sundays, what with everyone either in church or barbequing. Besides, it would do me good to get out of town and help me through the increasing load of guilt I was carrying over Fay’s—and now Harry’s—deaths. “Sounds good to me,” I told her. “I’ll make the airline reservations and notify Eddy Joe Hughey in case he’s free and wants to drive to Hamilton with us.”
***
As it turned out, Eddy Joe was not only free, but was happy for the chance to meet up again, so little more than twenty-four hours later, he was chauffeuring Beth and me across the forested hills of northern Alabama in his pearl Eldorado. There was something about the almost over-lush landscape that attracted and repelled at the same time, as if I’d seen it all before in a movie I couldn’t quite remember but that had somehow been unsettling.
Loquacious as ever, Eddy Joe chattered as he drove, about politics (he was against them), movies (he harbored a grand passion for Julianne Moore) and Alabama weather (too humid). To my amusement, Beth seemed enchanted with both Eddy Joe’s bulk and his just-as-massive charm, which I hoped meant that she was on her way toward recovery. I had to admit that Eddy Joe was cute, in a big, sloppy sort of way. With his swoony brown eyes and light brown hair greying at the sides, he looked—and acted—like an oversized, over-friendly golden retriever.
“I did me a little more pokin’ around in our Mr. Sherwood/Rinn’s life, and I’ve found us several more women he suckered,” Eddy Joe said, as he made a hard right off SR-78 and onto SR-43 into Hamilton. “Turns out one of them, a great ol’ gal livin’ down in Mobile, is the third cousin four times removed of the county sheriff up here, so I contacted him and he’s demandin’ to go along with us to arrest our boy’s thievin’ ass.”
The confrontation was turning into quite a party, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. “Are we supposed to meet him at the police station?”
“Nah, nobody steals nuthin’ on Sundays around here, so he’s meeting us over at the Elks Lodge with a couple deputies. He got the faxed warrant from Scottsdale this morning, which makes me think our lovely Miss Beth musta pulled a few strings. We’ll all drive over to the Rinn house together.”
Oh, whee. “I thought the whole idea was for Beth to confront Mr. Rinn herself.”
Eddy Joe nodded his big, shaggy head. “Sheriff Corliss is a patient feller. He and his boys will lay back in the woods until Miss Beth gives the skunk a piece of her mind.” Here there was a delighted titter from the back seat. “Then he’ll move in and y’all can start worrying about extradition.”
“The sheriff doesn’t expect any violence?”
Sandy curls bobbed again. “Nah. He says he always suspected Jacky Rinn was a weasel, but doubts he’d hurt a fly.”
I’ve heard serial killers described in much the same way, so I didn’t feel any better about our mission than I had when Beth first proposed it. Since I’d left my .38 at home, I also felt naked. “Um, Eddy Joe, are you, um…”
“Packin’? Sure am. I never go any place without Sweet Melissa.” He patted the slight bulge on the left side of his chest. “But rest assured, ladies, Mr. Rinn’s a lover, not a fighter.”
Which was exactly the problem.
After meeting up with the sheriff, we caravanned through Hamilton, a tidy little town that appeared to have no bars at all but a church on every corner. We continued north on SR-43 until we reached a gravel road that cut through a thick stand of oaks, and as their branches closed in overhead, I began to feel claustrophobic. As pretty as Alabama was, with its emerald fields and nearly rain forest lushness, I missed the wide-open spaces of the Southwest. Shortly before we emerged from the oaks, the sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee pulled to the side and let us continue on alone. I didn’t like the setup and told Eddy Joe so.
He laughed. “This ain’t Phoenix, Lena. Last time someone was shot dead out here was eight years ago, in a hunting accident.”
My suspicious mind wondered if it was really a hunting accident or someone settling a score, but I kept such dark ruminations to myself as the trees cleared and Jack Rinn’s place came into view. Contrary to popular opinion, crime frequently did pay. The house, a rambling tri-level of dark red brick offset by green shutters, sat at on a rise at the end of a lane bordered by acres and acres of rolling pastureland. A few well cared-for horses stared at us from the pasture on our right, while on our left, a herd of black fat Angus were too busy grazing in knee-deep grass to give us more than a passing glance.
“He owns a better spread than I do!” Beth sounded outraged.
Eddy Joe demurred. “Property values aren’t the same here as in Scottsdale. But those sure are some fine horses, ain’t they? Did ya see the big sorrel over by the pond?”
“You like horses?” For a moment, Beth forgot her ire. Horse people are like that.
Eddy Joe noticed, too, and used it. “Oh, yeah. I have me a Tennessee Walker named Eloise in back of my place, eatin’ me out of house and home. Now, Miss Beth, I want you to wait in the car and appreciate the equines for a while so Lena and I can go up to the house and make sure everything’s copacetic.”
Thus soothed, Beth agreed.
Happy that he was showing some common sense after all, I remained quiet until the Eldorado pulled up to the front door and the door opened to reveal a tiny, dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties. Wearing a pink maternity dress with matching pumps, she looked like she’d just arrived home from church. Ignorant of our purpose, she expressed delight at seeing us, and I had to remind myself that the biggest crooks often sported the widest smiles. As Eddy Joe and I exited the car, she said, “You here to see Jacky about that inheritance, Mr. Hughey?”
Eddy Joe gave her a big smile. “Sure am.”
Alea Rinn seemed even happier. “Oh, he’s been waitin’ for y’all. Say, you folks want somethin’ to eat? I cooked up some fried chicken for lunch and there’s plenty left over.” Oh, the South. She was already offering us food.
“We already ate,” Eddy Joe lied. “Just lead us to that ol’ boy of yours so we can get our business out of the way.”
After trying to tempt us with pecan pie for dessert, Alea led us through a living room packed with Sunday-best-dressed children into the den where a more casually dressed Jack Rinn sat hunkered over a computer. I figured he was probably trolling for more victims because the second we entered, he hit his screen saver. Or was that to keep his wife from seeing what he was doing? I hoped so. I’d really hate for Beth to send a pregnant woman to prison. Almost as tall as Eddy Joe, Rinn had such Elvis-black hair and Elvis-blue eyes that it reminded me Hamilton was only an hour’s drive away from Tupelo, where The King had been born. A distant relative, perhaps?
Unaware of what was about to go down, Alea gave her husband a peck on the cheek. “These are the folks about that inheritance thing.”
“Mr. Rinn!” Eddy Joe stuck out his beefy hand in a great show of bonhomie. “I’m Eddy Joe Hughey and this here’s Lena Jones, one of my business associates. We got somebody outside who’s dyin’ to talk with ya!”
Rinn looked puzzled but not particularly suspicious as he ambled after us through the house, Alea following. “I figured you’d call first.”
Neither Eddy Joe nor I answered. We both kept smiling and smiling until Rinn was out of the house. Then Eddy Joe waved at the Eldorado and Beth Osmon stepped out.
Sherwood/Rinn paled and almost went down. “Beth! I…I…”
By then, Alea knew something was wrong. “Jacky, who is…?”
Beth didn’t give her time to finish. In a split second she closed the distance between her and her faux fiancé and slapped him hard across the face. “The only reason I don’t shoot you, you sonofabitch, is because I couldn’t get my gun on the plane!” Then she drew back her hand, as if to smack him again.
Before she could, Alea jumped in front of her cringing husband. “You! Stop hittin’ my Jacky this minute, or I’ll…!”
My cue. I inserted myself between Beth and Alea. “That’s it. No one’s hitting anyone any more.”
Eddy Joe made a sour face. “Ah, Lena, you’re no fun.”
At that moment the sheriff’s Cherokee rolled out of the oak stand, up the drive, and came to a stop beside us. Sheriff Corliss quickly exited with his two deputies. He produced a pair of handcuffs and before his quarry could move, had Jack Rinn shackled, nose down, on the SUV’s hood. He drawled Rinn his rights, then shoved him in the back seat with a deputy on either side. Before the door closed, we could hear Jack Rinn bawling, “I did it for us, Alea! For our family!”
Sheriff Corliss ignored him. “Now that’s what I call a nice day’s work. We can get him booked in time to go back to the lodge for some pok…Um, for that church fund-raiser we’re havin’.” Turning to Alea, he said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your trouble, but it looks like Mr. Rinn here ain’t been a good Christian. Course, his attorney, who I do suggest you call sooner than later, might beg to differ.” To Eddy Joe and me, he said, “Y’all get along now. We don’t need any more excitement here.” With that, he climbed into the Cherokee and backed down the gravel drive.
Beth looked gratified but my heart went out to Alea, who stood frozen in place as the Cherokee disappeared into the oaks. Maybe I was wrong, but I didn’t think she knew anything about her husband’s out-of-state “business dealings.” “Mrs. Rinn, Alea, you deserve an explanation.”
For the first time, Beth looked at her, really looked at her, at the pregnant belly, at the dark-haired children peeking through the front door of the house. “You didn’t know, did you?” she asked.
Shock glazed Alea’s eyes. “Know what? Why’d Sheriff Corliss take Jacky away? Will somebody please tell me what’s goin’ on?”
Before I could stop her, Beth stepped around me and put her arm around Alea. “Let’s go back into the house, honey. We need to talk.”
***
On the plane back to Phoenix late that night, Beth fell asleep, leaving me wide awake to reflect alone on love, men, and family.
After the grief I’d just observed, I wasn’t sure I had the nerve for any one of the three.