Daddy's Gone a Hunting

35

On Monday morning, Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein were back at the scene of the explosion. They found insurance investigators meticulously sifting through the rubble. Frank knew both of them. Over the years they had been at other fires where arson was suspected. The difference in this case, Frank thought, is that if the fire can be attributed to Gus Schmidt acting alone, they’ll have to pay on the insurance claim. Even if Kate Connelly was involved, a good lawyer could lay the blame squarely on Schmidt. Unless, of course, she recovers and admits she put him up to it. Which is highly unlikely, Frank thought.

At the funeral home Friday, he and Klein had jumped up to assist when they witnessed Lottie Schmidt faint. They had carried her to the couch in the office. She had recovered quickly, but both they and her daughter had insisted that she rest on the couch in a back room for at least twenty minutes. An assistant at the funeral home had made a cup of tea for her.

Lottie’s absence had given Frank and Nathan a chance to speak with others at the wake who had worked with Gus. Speaking as one, they told the fire marshals that Gus had been fired after Jack Worth became manager, and that Gus hated both him and Douglas Connelly.

“Gus was a perfectionist,” was the way one of them put it. “It would take a team of experts to tell the difference between the original pieces and the copies of the furniture he made. For them to tell him his work wasn’t up to par was a terrible insult.”

“Did he ever talk about blowing up the complex?” Ramsey had asked.

One of the men had nodded. “In a manner of speaking. I’m on a bowling team with Gus. I mean I was on a bowling team with him. He always asked how things were going at the complex. When I told him we were getting a lot of returns, he said something like, ‘I’m not surprised. Do me a favor and set a match to the whole place for me.’ ”

All of this meant that the fire could end up being blamed solely on Gus, which the worried insurance investigators admitted to Frank Ramsey on Monday morning. While they were speaking, drivers began to move the big furniture vans from under the shelter to be placed in storage. Except for the damage from smoke and flying debris, they seemed to be in pretty good shape.

“Connelly will never try to rebuild this place,” Jim Casey, the older of the insurance investigators, said. “If he gets the insurance money, he can live like a king. On top of that, the property alone is worth a fortune. Why would he bother to rebuild?”

Four undamaged vans, all bearing the name CONNELLY FINE ANTIQUE REPRODUCTIONS, slowly exited past them up the driveway to the main road. Frank Ramsey saw that there was still one left in the far back area where the vans had been kept. That area had an overhead roof and open sides. He walked over to inspect the remaining van and observed the battered doors, the cracked windshield, the rusting exterior, the flat tires. It was obvious to him that this damage had preceded the explosion and that this useless van had been left there for a long time. Why didn’t they just get rid of this thing? he wondered. Jack Worth impressed me as the kind who would be a good manager. On the other hand, he had not insisted on the need for security cameras, so maybe he was all show. But Worth had told them that it was Douglas Connelly who wouldn’t let the money be spent. Either way, it wouldn’t have cost much to have this thing towed to a junkyard.

Frank walked around to the back of the van and then, not anticipating that it would open, turned the handle of the rear door. To his astonishment, he saw unmistakable signs that the van had been occupied. Empty wine bottles were scattered on the floor. Newspapers were haphazardly strewn throughout the deep interior. He picked up the newspaper nearest to the door and looked at the date on it.

It was Wednesday, the day before the explosion.

This meant that whatever vagrant was using this place to sleep might have been here that night. Frank Ramsey did not venture farther but closed the door of the van.

It was abundantly clear to him that the whole complex had become a complicated crime scene.