Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 45.

Ellie Ball came to my room three hours after Plinnit left.

“You are?” she asked Leo, frowning at his outlandish blue rayon shirt.

He got up from the chair in the corner, not that it made much difference, height-wise.

“Mr. Elstrom’s adviser.”

“Not his lawyer, as you told Lieutenant Plinnit?”

“I said only that I was Mr. Elstrom’s representative, Madame Law Woman. I never directly lie to the police.”

She turned to me. “He must sit in with us?”

“Yes.”

She came to the side of the bed, unlocked my leg, and set the cuffs next to the chair she took. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Lieutenant Plinnit. He just got confirmation from his medical examiner: George Koros was killed when you were up here. That made him angry. He is on his way back to Chicago.”

“I’m free to go?”

“Depends on your doctors-and on me.”

“You?”

“I can think of charges: unlawful possession of a firearm, trespass at the Taylor place, and,” she said, smiling just a little, “there’s still the matter of your run-in with those pigs, even though it’s not my county.”

Leo spoke. “What about the attempted murder of Dek, here?”

She lowered her eyes to the shirt drooping on him. “How do you keep that so bright?”

He smiled, bisecting his pale, narrow, bald head with perfectly white teeth. “Plant food.”

“Who shot you?” she asked me.

“George Koros’s killer.”

“Don’t evade.”

“There’s only one person left with motive: Darlene Taylor.”

“A sixty-year-old woman shot and beat you?”

“The only thing I’m sure of is that Darlene’s involved deeply in this thing. Down in Chicago, she must have seen, like the cops would see, that I’d pulled cash from Koros’s credit card account. She knew I was on the move, tracking her sister. She also knew those withdrawals could point to me as Koros’s killer. She came back up here, hoping no one knew she had ever left. As I told Plinnit, I think she brought back a substantial amount of money that Koros had embezzled from Sweetie Fairbairn. I think she intended to wait things out a bit, maybe until I was arrested, before disappearing from Hadlow permanently.”

“Except you showed up at her place?”

“It must have been a shock, learning I was sniffing around her property, but then she saw I could be a bonus. She could shoot me with the gun that killed Koros, fire another round with my hand on it to put my prints on the handle, and leave me to bleed out in the woods. My death would look like a suicide, perhaps an act of remorse after killing Koros. The problem was, she couldn’t know that I’d already been up here for a while, and could prove I wasn’t in Chicago when Koros got shot. The finger’s going to come back to point at her. You’ve got to be vigilant. If she learns I have an alibi, she’ll run, if she hasn’t already.”

“She killed her sister’s guard and George Korozakis?” she asked. “Rosemary, too?”

“I’m hoping Sweetie’s alive, and running.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then, “If you’re right, it’s a tragedy, all around. Folks say Georgie Korozakis and Darlene Taylor were quite an item, once upon a time.”

“Things can change people. Like the incident.”

A hardness flashed across her face, and then it was gone. “So you’re saying their romance got rekindled, all these years later?”

“For the love of money, this time.”

“I suppose.” Ellie Ball looked at the door. She was ready to leave. To be done with me.

“You know what I can’t figure, Sheriff?”

“What’s that?”

“Whether any of this ties back to that incident, when they were kids.”

I was right. Her face tensed again at the second mention of the incident. She stood up and started toward the door. “Have a safe journey back to Chicago, Mr. Elstrom.”

I’d struck a nerve with that random question about something that had happened long ago.

“Any thoughts as to why Darlene Taylor hung around that shack all those years, living in such squalor?” I asked her back.

“The doctor is going to release you today,” she said, without turning around. “Lieutenant Plinnit said he’d be happy to arrest you down in Chicago, if I don’t decide to charge you with something up here first. Best you leave town before I change my mind.”

“Haven’t you ever been curious why Darlene stayed on, after her sister Alta died? Don’t you want to know why someone would live out in that shack, for forty years?”

“There’s those of us who love Hadlow,” she said and stepped out into the hall.