Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 50.

“Sheriff Lishkin had doubts,” I said from Ellie Ball’s office doorway.

She leaned back in her chair, trying to paste surprise onto her face. It was a faint fit. “Doubts?”

“Have you gone through that material?”

“There’s nothing there.”

“That says plenty. Perhaps Sheriff Lishkin’s search naturally narrowed to the link between Darlene Taylor and Georgie Korozakis and the gas station robbery-”

“And Rosemary?” she interrupted. “Don’t forget your Sweetie Fairbairn.”

“He quit investigating by September. That’s too soon to give up on a murder investigation.”

“Roy Lishkin was a very thorough man. He did what he could, I’m sure.”

“It must have driven him crazy, not solving that case,” I said.

“What more do you want, Mr. Elstrom?”

Leo moved past me, gently dropped the file envelope on her desk, and retreated back out of the office.

“Who’s still around that can tell me about Alta Taylor?”

“Alta?” She almost spat the word.

“Who knew her? Who knew what kind of shape she was in?”

“That can’t matter now.”

“It does when you can’t tell me what killed her. Was she able to get around by herself? Could she feed herself? Could she bathe? Why did Darlene and Rosemary have to alternate staying home, so that one was always with Alta?”

“Alta’s been dead over forty years. No one’s left who knew her, except Darlene, and Rosemary.”

“A doctor, then, or a dentist. Someone had to know her.”

“They’re all dead. Her mother kept her home. Alta died unknown, save to her mother and the girls.”

“You’ll never find Alta’s death certificate, will you?”

“You’ll be leaving now, Mr. Elstrom,” Ellie Ball said.

“There is still the matter of my getting shot, Sheriff. How is your investigation of that coming?”

“We’re on the lookout.”

“Like Roy Lishkin was on the lookout?”

“We’re looking for anything that might suggest your wounds were not self-inflicted.”

“You know I didn’t shoot myself.” I turned to leave, slowly, so as not to excite the holes in my side, but one last fury had to get out. “What happened to the gun?”

Her eyes looked past me, at the purple that was Leo, but I had the feeling she wasn’t seeing him, either. Something had changed on her face.

“The gun?” she asked, in a flat voice. “Plinnit took test fires back to Chicago, to compare with what they extracted from Georgie Korozakis. We’ve kept the gun here.”

“I meant the gun that killed the gas station attendant.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“It was never found?”

“I just told you: I don’t know what happened to that gun.”

“There’s no mention of it in Sheriff Lishkin’s notes. That’s odd.”

She tried a smile. “Take care, Mr. Elstrom.”

“What just happened?” Leo said, checking the rearview mirror for perhaps the tenth time. He’d not said a word until we were a solid mile from Ellie Ball’s office.

“Which part?”

“For openers, beating on her about the gun used in the gas station robbery. That it was never recovered is understandable. The killer would have taken it with him.”

“I think it’s resurfaced.”

“Where?”

“In my hand.”

He hit the brakes, skidding to a stop, and turned to look at me. “You think that was the same gun that killed that gas station guy?”

“Just a hunch. That little bag in the evidence envelope contained two spent rounds. They looked like the one Plinnit said was dug out of my side.”

“How many times have you examined a bullet?”

“None.”

“How many times have you even held a bullet?”

“You mean other than the two in the plastic bag, just a few minutes ago?”

“Don’t obfuscate.”

“That would be none, as well.”

“So much for your ballistic expertise.”

“It’s an intriguing possibility.”

“That the same gun did the gas station attendant, Koros, and you? Darlene Taylor was the shooter, all three times?”

“Why not?”

“Again I ask: She’s the one who shot you and then beat you up? That sixty-year-old woman?”

“Maybe she hired someone to shoot me.”

“Please, don’t tell me it could have been the handyman who occasionally came around to help with chores. Like, ‘Joe, today I want you to do some weeding, mend the screen door, shoot Dek Elstrom, and then beat him half to death’?”

“What’s the bigger question, Leo?”

He paused, thinking. It always drove him nuts when I saw something he missed.

“Is it real big?” he asked, watching my face carefully.

“Huge.”

“Damn it. I know it has to do with Alta Taylor,” he said, “because you pressed the sheriff so hard about her.” Finally, he scratched his cheek, a sure sign of surrender. “Shit, I don’t know.”

“One of the Taylor girls, either Darlene or Rosemary, always made sure to be home with Alta.”

“Ellie Ball made a point of that.”

“Alta couldn’t be left home alone.”

Leo’s pale face darkened with what I hoped was embarrassment. “Roy Lishkin interviewed three people who saw both Darlene and Rosemary out driving with Georgie Korozakis that day. Both girls shouldn’t have been out driving. One of them was supposed to be home with Alta.”

“Bingo.”

“Unless Alta was in the car that day,” he said fast, so I couldn’t.

“Bingo.”

“But nobody saw Alta. And why was that, the uncharacteristically slowed but inevitably brilliant Brumsky asks? Because they kept her down, in the backseat of that car. And why was that, the brilliant Brumsky considers, at warp speed? Because she was the shooter,” he yelled, “and the two girls figured that if no one could place her at the scene, she’d never get charged.”

I nodded, because saying “Bingo” again would have been superfluous.