Pay Dirt, page 21
“Are you new in town?”
“Just visiting,” I said. “I’m staying in Gertrude Perec’s garage apartment.”
“Oh! The detective.” She eyed me avidly.
I agreed that I was the detective.
“Are you investigating our women’s group?” Porter said.
“Just investigating breakfast, and a chance to talk to Gertrude. She’s so busy . . .” I let the thought trail off.
“Yes,” Porter said drily. “She is very busy with a great many things. I’m surprised she thought she needed a detective, she’s so assiduous herself in conducting investigations.”
“I understand she works with Pat Everard on a lot of committees?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” Porter said, even more drily.
We’d reached the room where the breakfast was held. I asked Porter to point Everard out to me.
“Next to Gertrude, by the coffee urn. There’s a goodwill offering—five dollars.” She turned away, putting an arm around another woman in another warm greeting. I followed the crowd to the food table.
Pat Everard, with her head of graying curls, wasn’t as elegantly groomed as Gertrude, but she possessed a similar authoritative air. When Gertrude saw me, she didn’t seem to be filled with the charity one associates with church gatherings.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
I fished in my wallet for a five. “I want to talk to you and Ms. Everard. This seemed like a good place to do it.”
“This is a church women’s breakfast. It’s unbearable that you think you can attack me here.”
“Attack?” I poured a cup of coffee. It was thin and smelled bitter. Too long in the urn. “I want information that the two of you possess. I don’t think asking for it is an attack.”
“What is it you want to know?” Everard demanded.
“The planning meeting that gave approval to the project on Yancy Hill. When you reported on it to Zoë Cruickshank, you told her the application had been for a resort, with some condos and small shops.”
“That was at least two years ago.” Everard looked at Gertrude, who nodded. “I don’t remember exactly what we said.”
“This seems to be an enormous project. Since you chaired the planning committee, I hoped you might remember more details. How much did the applicant’s lawyer spell out about the resort’s power needs?”
“I just said, the meeting was years ago. I couldn’t possibly remember details like that on short notice.” Everard’s dark brows rose in hauteur.
“Do you remember the firm the lawyer was with? It’s not in the online minutes.”
“The questions you’re asking have nothing to do with Clarina Coffin’s death,” Gertrude said. “And even if they did, Ms. Everard’s son is fully capable of following up on them.”
“Has Deke talked to you again about what you were doing at the Dundee house?”
“Sergeant Everard knows everything about that unfortunate incident,” Gertrude said.
Conversation in the room had died down. We were putting on a show, and everyone wanted to hear the dialogue.
I smiled so the audience could see I was the cool, relaxed member of the trio. “The whole project is so interesting,” I said. “Have you been up the hill to look at the construction site?”
“Of course not,” Gertrude said brusquely. “If this is your idea of an investigation—”
“But the Everard family owned land there, for generations,” I said, eyes widening in astonishment. “I’d think at least Ms. Everard here would have some curiosity about what’s happening to it. And then there was the sad death of Clete Rotherhaite. Not on Yancy land, at least I don’t think it is. But on the river path right by the coal plant.”
Gertrude and Pat exchanged glances—worried? Angry? I couldn’t tell. They’d been friends a long time; an outsider couldn’t read their cues.
“That was a natural death. It was unfortunate that it happened where it did, so that the poor man’s body wasn’t discovered for several days, but his death is not a police matter,” Pat said. “I know Chicago is awash in unsolved murders, so that may have made you think all police forces are incompetent, but even before my son joined the force, the Lawrence police were able to solve local crimes without a hotshot private eye’s help.”
Gertrude nodded and brushed past me to face the room, smiling, holding out her hands. “I’m so sorry for the delay. A mix-up with the woman who’s been staying in my garage apartment. Pastor Tracy, could I prevail on you to lead us in a blessing?”
Behind me, Pat Everard murmured, “Well done, Gertrude,” and found a place at one of the tables.
The youngest woman in the room got to her feet to offer thanks for the thin bitter coffee and the sweet rolls, with a special thanks to Ashley and Judith, who’d done the baking this week. I’d paid my five dollars, so I took a muffin and some fruit and found a seat at the same table as the woman who’d accompanied me into the room.
“She’s the detective,” Porter said, when the rest of the women turned to stare at me.
There was a mixed flow of greetings—Do you work with Pat’s son? We think he does such a wonderful job; we heard Gertrude had a detective living with her. Her life isn’t in danger, is it? But Gertrude cut the flow off with a reading of the minutes, the agenda, the good works the group was doing with Bring Lawrence Home, the book they were discussing at tomorrow night’s book club meeting, a fictionalized account of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s love affair with a woman named Fanny Appleton.
Gertrude smiled. “You know I feel a connection there—one of my great-great-grandfathers was a cousin to the Appleton family, so of course I was enthralled by the story, but I’ll look forward to everyone else’s reaction.”
“As long as we don’t spend too long on our important family connections,” one of the women at my table muttered.
A woman at another table raised her hand to say she thought the group should invite me to speak—it wasn’t often they had a chance to meet a real investigator—but Gertrude shut that down with a firm hand. She assured the room I wouldn’t be staying in town much longer.
“But two murders!” the woman said. “We’d all like to know if our lives are in danger when we walk along the river path.”
There was an assenting buzz, which Pat interrupted. “This is how fake news takes hold. The man who died on the river path was not murdered; he had a heart attack. But if people want to hear from detectives who actually know what they’re doing, I’ll talk to Deke and see if he can send an officer over next week to speak to us. They have some bright young women on the force these days.”
The meeting ended soon after, but several women came over to me, asking if I knew who’d killed Clarina. One bold soul brought up the trolling Trevor Millay was conducting. She wanted to know if it was true that I’d been to a drug party at the old Dundee house.
“I went to the Dundee house to rescue a student who’d taken an overdose,” I said. “As Pat Everard just pointed out, it’s so easy for facts to get garbled these days, but you can definitely check that one with Deke Everard. Or if you know Brett Santich? I understand he owns that house. Maybe he can shed some light on what’s been going on there. As far as walking the riverfront—it’s always good to let a friend know where you’re going to be if you’re out alone.”
Everyone bused their own plates and flatware, while two other women packed up the leftover muffins and fruit. These were destined for a homeless shelter, someone told me.
I strolled over to Pat and Gertrude, who were trying to end a conversation with Pastor Tracy. “Pastor, I’m sorry to interrupt. I have a few more questions to ask Ms. Everard and Ms. Perec while they’re together.”
“Of course.” The pastor looked at me curiously, but moved away from the pair to speak to someone else.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Gertrude said.
“Just one last thing.” I kept smiling—the only way to keep from shouting at her. “Yesterday I read an obituary in the Kanwaka Courier about a guy named Theodore Wheelock, who staked the first claim to the land. The paper praised him for—”
I unlocked my phone and found the photograph I’d taken of the story. “Yes. Until Theodore began plowing and planting on Yancy, it had been ‘home to Indians, coloreds, and every variety of sin and debauchery.’ Clarina read that and came to see you about it, didn’t she? And that’s what she wanted Cady to include in her Kansas history curriculum. That must have seemed like a terrible assault to the sense you both have of being descended from Lawrence’s founders.”
Gertrude stood frozen, like one of those plastic ice cubes with an insect inside. Pat put an arm around her.
“That’s enough. You can’t come into a church, pretending to be a detective, and hurl accusations like that. I’m calling my son to see what action we can take to make you leave town.”
“The tried and true tar and feathering? I don’t think the LKPD would countenance that.”
“You need to be out of my house by the end of the day today.” Gertrude choked out the words. “Pat, can you drive me? The shock—I need to sit down.”
“If Ms. Perec suffers from your words, I will hold you accountable,” Pat Everard spat over her shoulder as she tenderly escorted Gertrude from the room.
Pastor Tracy hurried to their side and took Gertrude’s other arm.
“What was that about?” Lucy Porter asked me.
I was staring after them. “Genealogy,” I finally said. “Their roots in this town are very important to them.”
What was it Cady had said when I’d asked about French settlers in Lawrence? Gram’s family were English to the core.
I’d bet my meager IRA that Gertrude’s birth name had been Wheelock.
32
Urban Cowboy
It was early afternoon when Peppy and I drove across the bridge to the path on the north side of the Kaw. I should have been hunting for housing, after Gertrude’s ultimatum, but I had an urge to see if I could stir up the thousand hornets Deke had threatened might come for me if I went to the coal plant. The day was gray, chilly, with a threat of drizzle in the low-hanging clouds.
The south side of the river, where we usually ran, was parkland, with a well-kept trail surrounded by trees and benches. The north side also had a trail, but heading west it was surrounded by industry. Dump trucks and semis rocked the roads. A train with sixty or so coal-filled hopper cars ran near us, its horn sounding like a cow in anguish.
We passed a salt mountain, a yard filled with school buses, a couple of cement plants, some motels, a light industry park, and then suddenly we were in open country. The Wakarusa power plant stood out in the near distance, its main stack a rusting orange sentinel keeping watch over farmland.
The state had created a two-hundred-mile-long trail on this side of the river. The trick was finding a way from the road down to the Kaw. The roads had been laid out by someone with a mania for squares. Every time I thought I was getting close, the road made a ninety-degree turn and led me deeper into farmland.
I finally came to the plant’s access road, the one Lou and Ed must have taken the day they thought they were going to bid on the plant’s scrap. A blinking red light in the distance marked the gates and guard station.
I didn’t try to drive to the guard station but returned to the main road and pulled over to one side. There was no shoulder; the Camry was uncomfortably close to the drainage ditch between road and field. We were about a quarter mile from the river, on the edge of a field plowed for the winter. I let Peppy out, and we crossed the field. That makes it sound simple. Washington crossing the Delaware, yes, piece of cake in a small boat on a tidal river that bucked and heaved under him. V.I. and Peppy crossing the field. Piece of cake on foot over large clumps of dirt mixed with straw.
Peppy wasn’t bothered—she ran in hunting mode, crisscrossing the field as if it were smooth grass, periodically returning to me with a big grin. Yellow-breasted birds skimmed the furrows, whistling to each other as they found insects in the earth. I was the creature who was out of place, stumbling my way through the heavy clods.
When we reached the river, my thighs and knees reminded me that I hadn’t done any squats for months. Something else for my to-do list. I shared a peanut butter sandwich and part of a water bottle with the dog while I caught my breath.
Peppy was eager for a swim after her run, but the water surface here was oily and iridescent with coal dust. I leashed her up. “You’d come out a black lab if you went in,” I told her, “and you’d have enough carcinogens in your system to poison a city block.”
Now that we were close to the plant, I could see that the stack was periodically belching clouds of gray smoke, like an elderly smoker trying to blow rings.
The river made a number of tight bends here, so that while the plant was close, it was maddeningly hard to reach. We could hear machinery, which also sounded elderly, going ka-thunk, and then pausing to wheeze as it worked its way to the next ka-thunk.
As we followed the trail around the river’s tight loops, I realized that apart from the plant noises, the nearby undergrowth was quiet. The whistling birds who’d flown around us while we crossed the field were keeping away from the dirty water and contaminated bushes.
Around one loop, we came to a place where the bushes and grasses were flattened by tire tracks from all-terrain vehicles. I guessed this was where the cops and ambulance team had driven to reach Clete Rotherhaite’s body.
Runners had come on him lying on the side of the trail, but that had been three weeks ago. I couldn’t see any remnants of his death, but Peppy sniffed uneasily around the spot.
“Anything in the undergrowth, girl? A pipe wrench? A rock with skin on it?”
The two of us hunted but didn’t find any possible weapon. Of course if he had been murdered, the river was right there to take care of the evidence.
The plant appeared suddenly around the next bend. It was enormous, covering an area that might hold a couple of football fields. Despite its age and the crust of grime covering the buildings, the complex held an air of menace: I dare you to try to get rid of me.
A fence surrounded the plant, but it, too, was old. Especially down here by the river, sections of it were so rusted that the prongs had come away from the metal posts. We were standing at the back, so I couldn’t tell how many people might be at work, but we were at the end where the coal came in. A half-dozen hopper cars stood on the siding.
The noise had been growing as we’d gotten nearer. This close in, it was ferocious. Peppy whined, pawed the ground, looked pleadingly at me. I hated to torment her further, but I pushed away one of the rusted sections of fence and crossed into the yard.
Someone was overseeing the hopper cars, but his back was to me. He didn’t see the dog and me as we passed. When we walked across the tracks a thundering noise shook the ground. One of the cars had released its load into an underground shed. The train engine blew its horn and begin inching forward, moving another hopper into position over the shed. I took out my phone to photograph the scene.
With Peppy clinging to my legs, I circled the plant and reached the entrance. A trio of men in hard hats and safety vests was sitting at a card table inside the plant’s open doors, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. Two of them were smoking. They all had phones out. Every now and then, one would lean across the table to shout something at his friends, but in that racket you couldn’t carry on a conversation.
I walked up to them, smiling happily, Little Miss Sunshine, bringing joy to the jobsite. I tried to say, “Hi, guys,” but the machinery swallowed my words.
The men looked up at me, taken aback by my arrival.
One of them stood so he could bellow in my face, “Who are you, and how in hell did you get into the yard?”
I put a couple of my cards on the table. “I’m an investigator; I walked up the river trail with my dog, looking for the place where Clete Rotherhaite was found.”
The two men sitting looked at my card, looked at the standing man, waiting for his reaction. The last of the hopper cars must have dumped its load because the noise dropped enough that we could hear each other.
“You investigating Clete’s death?” the standing man said. “That was a hard way to die. Hard on Rita, for sure, but, hell, we’d worked together going on twenty-five years. Hard on all of us. We’d just as soon let him rest in peace.”
“I hear you,” I said. “Insurance, you know, companies have all the sensitivity of a blast furnace.”
“What?” the man was indignant. “They threatening not to pay his life insurance?”
“Workers’ comp,” I said. “They’ll pay out if he was still employed when he died. That’s the problem. Some suit in Chicago said he’d quit, that he wasn’t on the Wakarusa payroll when he died.”
The man spat, aiming about an inch from my foot. “You working for the company?”
I didn’t flinch or move my foot. “Neither the insurer nor the coal plant. I’m independent, trying to get the facts so that Rita Rotherhaite can at least get the indemnity payment she’s entitled to.”
The three men looked at each other again, nodded infinitesimally. The ringleader took us inside, past giant boilers and pipes, conveyor belts and heavy fans. A scene from Walter Mitty. Pocketa-pocketa.
We crossed the floor and went into a room in a far corner that was sort of soundproofed. Peppy remained glued to my legs, whining at the noise, the heat, the smell of sulfur.
“That whole day was fucked, if you’ll pardon my French,” the spokesman said. “Clete, he was like a cat on hot bricks from the moment he walked in the door. Then Lou Arata and Ed Lyndes came by. They thought the place was being mothballed, they were going to bid on some of the pipes, things easy to dismantle that a two-man crew could handle. Arata and Lyndes, they were in this room here with Clete.
“I’m the day shift foreman so I’m down in the yard, when this dude drives up in some hundred-thousand-dollar ride. You can tell he’s a suit even though he’s wearing boots, jeans, the whole western look, all brand-new, like he opened the boxes this morning. Right behind him another suit drives up in a white Lexus, this one with a jacket and tie, carrying a briefcase.
