Double Take

CHAPTER 51

About a half mile from Julia’s house, on Brinkley Street, Savich and Sherlock found the old man standing on his narrow front porch in front of a 1940s cottage, leaning on a cane. He told them first thing that he’d stashed his great-granddaughter safely inside the house. “A wild thing it was,” he said, shaking his head, “happened real fast. My name’s Tuck Wilson.”

Savich introduced himself and Sherlock, pulled out their shields. The old man stuck out his hand. Savich automatically started to shake it, then realized both he and Sherlock were black and filthy. He smiled at the old man. “I don’t want to dirty you up.”

“I appreciate that. So you both were in that fire in the big Ransom place,” Mr. Wilson said and motioned toward the door. “It’s all over the news. You want to come in and clean up?”

Sherlock smiled. “No thank you, Mr. Wilson. We need to ask you some more questions about the man on the motorcycle.”

“Call me Tuck, everybody does except for my little great-granddaughter. She calls me Friar, smart-mouthed little punk.”

Tuck Wilson waved them toward £ wooden swing, but they shook their heads.

“—after the man drove his motorcycle right into the bushes, what exactly did he do?”

“Like I told the other officer, the guy jumped right off—he seemed real familiar with a motorcycle, smooth—okay, he turned and looked up the street. Not more than a minute passed before this blue car drove up, he jumped in the passenger seat, and they took off.”

A whole minute, Savich thought, and smiled. “Please tell us what the motorcycle guy looked like, Mr. Wilson.”

Tuck waved his cane toward the bushes. “He was more tall than not, a black guy, and he moved real fast and he was strong and graceful-like. He had on an old banged-up black leather jacket, I could see the nicks in the leather even with my old eyes. He had on some boots, not cowboy boots, but black boots like a biker would wear. He was wearing a helmet. When he first jumped off the motorcycle, he pulled it off. He was wearing glasses, isn’t that a kick? He saw me, I know he must have, saw Alice too, but he didn’t make any sort of move on us. No, he just concentrated on the street, and watched for the car.”

“Excellent, Tuck,” Savich said. “Okay, think back now. You see the blue car drive up. You see the driver. Tell us about him.”

“Hmmm, now that’s a bit more difficult, it all happened real fast. It was a man, young like the first—” Tuck broke off, laughed. “You gotta understand, anyone who isn’t on the shady side of sixty-five looks young to me. Alice said they were both old, but she’s seven years old.”

“Middle-aged, maybe?”

“He just wasn’t getting on like me.”

“The driver, was he bald? Glasses? What was he wearing?”

“No, he wasn’t bald, I’m sure about that. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much hair he had on his head, only that I could see some. The color? I couldn’t tell, really couldn’t, sorry. I remember thinking it was weird how his fingers kept tapping on the steering wheel while the motorcycle guy climbed into the car. Then he started yelling.”

“Could you hear what he was yelling about?” Savich asked.

“‘Hurry’ that’s what he yelled, yelled it twice, and then he cussed and stomped on the gas. Now that I think about it, that car really took off fast. So it probably wasn’t an everyday sort of car, probably a fancy one, German, maybe, sounded real sweet and smooth.”

“Friar, you didn’t tell them the guy driving the car was mad, real mad.”

Savich and Sherlock looked down at a little girl who’d slipped out the front door and was peering around at them from behind her great-grandfather’s waist. “You’re Alice, right?”

Alice stared up at Sherlock. “I bet your hair’s real beautiful, ma’am, but not right now. It looks like you need to wash it. Oh, I’m Alice Douggan and this is one of my ancestors, Friar. That’s what he calls himself.”

Sherlock smiled between the two of them. “Is it all right, Tuck, if we speak to Alice?”

“Sure, no problem. Alice, stop hiding behind me. Come out here. You stand straight and tall, get those shoulders back and you tell them what you saw. Don’t add in all sorts of little details from that imagination of yours or else they might arrest you. They’re federal agents.”

Alice walked around Tuck, stood front and center. She cocked her head to one side, studied them straight on. Not at all shy, this cute little fairy “You sure are dirty. My mama would skin me alive if I ever got as dirty as you are. You were in that big fire, right?”

“That’s right,” Savich said, and went down on his knees so he was eye level with the little girl. “I sure like your freckles. I wish my wife had some to go with her red hair, but I guess when she came down the line, the good Lord shook his head at her. When our little boy asked for some, he shook his head at him too.”

“I don’t like them. The kids make fun of me, call me speckle face.”

“Wait until you’re twenty-one and smiling real big. All the guys will line up to talk to you. And I want you to remember what I told you.”

The little girl smiled back at him. Can’t help it, Sherlock thought, content to let Dillon take over. “Alice, you said the man driving the car was mad?”

“Oh boy, was he ever. He was yelling and cussing something fierce at the motorcycle guy, worse than Friar ever does. My mama would have cleaned his mouth out with her organic barley soap. It tastes worse than oatmeal.”

“You didn’t hear any of his words other than the curses?” Alice shook her head. “He had real long legs, and he looked like he could twist the head off a snake.”

“Who?”

“The black dude, the one wearing glasses. When he opened the car door, he cussed a blue streak right back at the man who was driving, called him a dickhead.”

“Alice—”

“I’m sorry, Friar, but that’s what he called the man—dickhead. He said, ‘Shut up, dickhead, and drive.’ “

“Okay, let’s move on. The man driving, Alice. What did he look like?”

“He was old, but not as old as Friar. There aren’t many people that old. He was wearing this really neat ring and he was banging it against the steering wheel. I’d like to have a ring like that. I could wear it on a leather band around my neck, like my friends do at school.”

Savich said, “Tell us about the ring, Alice.”

“He wore it on his marriage finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring, it was this big silver band thing with a black square sitting on top of it, all flat, with a lump in the middle. Just like Friar’s. I noticed it because the sun hit it just right, like a light sword, and made it glow.”

“That sounds like a Mason’s ring to me,” Tuck said. “You really saw that, Alice? You’re not making that up?”

“I saw it, Friar, I really saw it.”

Tuck said to Savich, “Thing is, I’ve got a Mason’s ring, she’s seen it a million times. No, I’m not wearing it today, my arthritis is kicking up.”

“Yes, it was a lot like yours, Friar, I promise.”

“Well,” Sherlock said five minutes later as she climbed into the passenger side of her dad’s Beemer, “do you think she made up the Masonic ring?”

“We might as well go with it, or at least with a ring on the guy’s wedding finger that maybe looks a bit different.” He smiled. “Cute kid. That hair of hers was so blond it was nearly white. Now, we know the guy with the ring had some hair, but we don’t know what color. And he was old or he was young, depending on whether you are seven or eighty.”

Sherlock said, “If Makepeace was cursing back at the guy who was driving and yelling at him, then it doesn’t seem likely the driver was the one who imported him to kill Julia. He sounds more like a local Makepeace hired to help him today. I’m thinking what happened was more than the guy bargained for, got him really scared.”

Savich said. “We’ll see what the canvassing officers have come up with.”

Sherlock gave him a big smile and ran a finger down her face. “So, I guess Alice was right, and it’s time to go play in the shower?”

Savich grinned, showing white teeth, just about the only white showing in his face. He covered her filthy hand with his, pressing her palm hard against his leg. “This was too close, Sherlock.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what you always say.” She leaned over and kissed him, saw he was still thinking of what could have happened. “I like having you around, Dillon. If you hadn’t yelled for me to hit the deck right before the bomb exploded, I might have gotten whacked by some flying stairpost. But we’re all right, Julia and Cheney are all right, the cops are all right. Hey, I wonder if my underwear’s black.”

“I’ll let you know,” Savich said, and released a pent-up breath.

When he pulled into the Sherlocks’ driveway, he saw Ruth standing in the open front door, waving at them.

“What now?” Savich asked the rhododendron bushes, and followed Sherlock to the house.