Chapter 23

 

All of Adele’s crazy ideas swirled around in my head as I drove to Emily City, but I was too annoyed to sort it all out. Paddy was getting accustomed to staying at Fur and Fins, and once again I dropped him off to play while I looked for a place to get an inexpensive cell phone. I grabbed a burger and fries at a fast-food drive-thru and cruised the small strip malls until I found a wireless phone store.

After an interminable wait with six people ahead of me, a young, acne-scarred man asked if he could help. He tried to sell me several fancy “mobile devices,” as he called them, but I finally convinced him I only wanted to make an occasional phone call while away from my house. This caused him to downgrade his sales pitch to something smaller, but I was determined to buy a phone and not a portable computer. Eventually, I had my way, and left with a basic flip phone, activated for a limited number of monthly minutes at a reasonable fee.

My frustration quota for the day was about maxed out. Having Family Friends infiltrated by a racist, hearing Adele’s improbable assertions, eating junk food for lunch, and being pressured to buy something I didn’t want had taken a toll. To be honest, I was seething inside, and nearly forgot to pick up the dog at the pet store.

But Paddy wagged his whole body, not just his tail, when he was brought in from the play yard, as if I were his favorite person in the whole world. He thrust his nose into my hand, and when I knelt down to pet him he insisted on trying to lick my face, despite my protestations, until I was laughing out loud. Somehow he knew my efforts to push his long face away from mine were only half serious, and in a few minutes I was sitting flat on the floor, leaning against a pallet of dog food bags, with a wet face, half-crying from my released emotions and gulping with the effort to stop. The sales assistant had walked away and left me several minutes previously. Now, he returned with a woman who appeared to be a manager.

“Ma’am, is there something wrong?” she asked.

“No, no. There was, but I think it’s just been fixed,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry for causing a disturbance.”

“No problem. Dogs can be a great comfort, can’t they?” She smiled.

“They certainly can,” I assured her.

Paddy woofed in subdued agreement, and we left the pet store in much better spirits.

I decided I wasn’t going to let circumstances keep me from talking to John Aho any longer. With Adele claiming Larry Louama was an unpunished killer, now on the loose, I wanted to find out about his attack on John. Even though it had happened long ago, I wanted to know why John hadn’t pressed charges.

Aho’s Service Station was located on the south edge of Cherry Hill, and was the type of place one rarely finds any more. It had not morphed into a convenience store but really serviced cars, in addition to selling gas and oil. The parking area was small and was crammed with vehicles apparently waiting repairs. A two-bay garage beside the cashier’s office was dark with the grease of several decades. The office wasn’t much cleaner, but the exterior of the building had been painted white with blue trim, and someone, perhaps John’s wife, Marie, had filled blue tubs with bright purple petunias beneath the windows.

I didn’t see anyone, even though the doors were all open, but followed the sound of sharp blows on metal, and a bright flare of light from a drop cord. In this way, I easily located John, peering up into the undercarriage of a car which was raised on a hoist. He craned his neck toward me.

“Ana,” he said. “What can I do for you?” He set a hammer down on a bench covered with grease-encrusted tools and wiped his hands on a pink rag. He quipped, “I can adjust any bolt as soon as I find the right size hammer.”

His grin was infectious, and I smiled. “Do you have a minute?” I asked. “I see you’re busy. It’s not about a car problem,” I added.

“There are always cars to be fixed, but life’s more than broken vehicles. Let’s talk out here in the light.” He stepped out into the sunshine, blinked and leaned his rump against the low brick ledge that created a sort of exterior chair rail around the building.

I’d been thinking about how to approach this subject, since I wasn’t sure it was common knowledge that Larry Louama was out of prison. I began, “I’ve been trying to understand DuWayne Jefferson better. He’s been upsetting Star and Sunny all week, and I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that he sees them.”

“Bad,” said John in a flat voice.

“Well, I sometimes think so too, but he is their father, and they naturally would like to have a relationship.”

John shrugged.

I continued, “The person I really want to ask you about is Larry Louama. I understand that he and DuWayne were good friends.”

“There’s a train wreck waiting to happen.”

“How’s that?”

“Those two were in school together at Emily City High. Larry quit, but DuWayne finished, at least. He played football.”

“Emily City? I thought the Louamas lived here in Cherry Hill.”

“They do, but Larry got kicked out of school here, and his parents rented in a room with someone in Emily City, and enrolled him over there. Didn’t do any good. The boy had no use for education. He quit the day he turned sixteen.”

“So Larry was always in trouble?”

“Since he was in grade school. And anyone he associated with couldn’t help but be involved too.”

“I heard he came after you with a tire iron.”

“Yup.” John paused and shifted his weight. “You manage to hear a lot for a newcomer. That’s pretty old news.”

“I’m not trying to pry. I did start asking about Angelica, just to be able to talk to the girls without putting my foot in my mouth.” I grinned. “And people tell me all kinds of things.”

“That’s probably true enough.”

“So, do you want to tell me about it?”

“There’s not much to tell. We used to have a pop machine back then, and a candy counter. Larry walked over here one evening, looking to buy a can of pop, but the machine was out of order. I think he must have been high on something because he went berserk.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“I was working on some car, Jerry Caulfield’s actually, as I recall.”

“You remember that?” I was astonished.

“I do, but you’ll know why in a minute.”

“Oh, sorry. Go ahead.”

“So, Larry started kicking the pop machine and cussing me out something fierce. I went out to see what was going on. There was a tire iron balanced on this ledge, right over there,” he pointed to the continuation of the ridge he was leaning on, “and he grabbed it up and started swinging. Broke the front of the pop machine.”

“Were you here alone?”

“Of course. Never had much use for hired help. Anyway, I reached back inside here to lay hands on something myself. I got a hold of a crowbar and we faced off. His eyes were crazy-like.”

“How big is Larry?”

“Big enough. He wasn’t full-grown then, but was about my size, and wiry-tough. And on drugs. At first, he decided not to take me on, but he began to smash windows and anything he could reach. I was really worried he was going to dent Caulfield’s Cadillac.”

“Did he?”

“Nope, I got between him and the garage door, and then he aimed for my head, but I’ve been around the block a time or two. Done a little martial arts in my day. He took one big swing, but I just put that crowbar in the right place and when the tire iron connected with it there was a big ‘twang,’ and Larry let out one huge yelp. The tire iron went flying.” John had ducked his head, and now looked up at me shyly, clearly proud of a story he hadn’t had a chance to tell in a long time. “And his hands stung so bad he couldn’t pick up the baseball cap that had fallen off his head. He ran off and left it behind. He was just a kid then. I probably wouldn’t fare so well against him anymore.”

“Did you press charges?” I asked, although I’d already been told that he hadn’t.

“Now there’s a funny thing. I wanted to. I called the police and filed a report right away. I sure didn’t want to have the insurance turn down my claim for these big windows.”

“But they wouldn’t let you? That seems odd.”

“It wasn’t that simple. Cherry Hill called in the Sheriff’s Department, and they came over with an FBI agent, of all things.”

“The FBI? Why?”

“The drugs. Apparently Larry was in so deep, even at sixteen, that they were trying to use him to get to some of the big distributors.”

“So they didn’t want to send him to a juvenile home and lose their connections?”

“That’s about the size of it. The government paid for my windows, and everything was played down.”

“What became of him?”

“Nothing good. He kept on dealing drugs—everyone knew that—but he managed to balance on that line between giving the authorities enough information to keep out of jail, and continuing to make plenty of money himself. Finally ended up in state prison for cutting up someone in a fight, downstate. But he’s out again, so I hear.”

“I’ve been told that, too. I heard a rumor that connected him with the death of a businessman in Emily City.”

“Yup. J. Everett Bailey. Different county, of course, but he was a bit of a celebrity. He gave lots of money to local causes. Really a big deal when it happened. He was shot in his own motel. Left on the floor, and he bled out.”

“Why wasn’t Larry arrested for that, if he was there?”

“I don’t remember. Probably no witnesses.”

“But he was with DuWayne the day Angelica disappeared?”

John nodded. “He sure managed to have an alibi on an important date.”

“It sounds like they just covered each other, but why did anyone believe them?”

“That’s a really good question, don’t you think?”