Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 52.

Five minutes away from the Would You? Leo cracked wise in what he regarded as a great Humphrey Bogart voice, “We’ve picked up a tail.” His Bogart was nervous.

I checked the outside mirror, saw the cruiser. “One of Ellie Ball’s deputies again, and not too subtle this time. He’s staying close.”

“Por qué?” he asked, slipping his Bogart into Spanish for no appropriate reason.

“Intimidation. We’re not being tailed; we’re being nudged, out of town.”

“Por qué?”

“Because she’s afraid we’ll stumble into something she does not want stumbled into.”

“What could that be?” he asked, blessedly back in English.

“The incident. I think it figures into everything I’m looking at.”

“What are you looking at?”

“I have no idea. I want to see if any of the people who saw the kids out by the gas station are still around.”

“Then we’re out of here?”

“Anxious to get home, are you?”

“Ambivalent. Ma will be dancing the night away with her friends. On the other hand, if I stay up here with you, I might get shot.”

“It’s a toss-up,” I agreed.

At the motel, I gave Leo the names I’d written down at the sheriff’s office, and he headed off to question the desk clerk. I went into my room, to the phone book and directory assistance.

It was short work. Only one of the three names had a working phone number.

Before I could call, Leo came back with the news that the desk clerk didn’t recognize any of the names. He also brought back three Cokes. He gave one to me, went out to pass another in through the deputy’s car window, and leaned against the cruiser’s door. Leo is like that; he makes people comfortable with him in seconds. In no time at all, he’d have the cop talking about something that might be useful.

The only active name answered her phone on the third ring. I played it straight up, introducing myself and saying I was interested in the gas station killing forty years before.

“My word, I thought that was talked out years ago,” she said.

“I’m particularly interested in your conversation with Sheriff Lishkin.”

“You mean when I said I’d have no part trying to railroad the poor Taylor girls and that Georgie Korozakis?”

“Actually, his notes didn’t mention that.”

“Good thing, but he wasn’t going to do that, anyway. He was just looking for the truth.”

“You’re sure you saw both Darlene and Rosemary in the car?”

“They were good kids, the Taylor girls. You’d see Darlene everywhere with that boy, Georgie, racing around in his convertible, laughing, sucking up life. Big car, it was. A Chevy Impala, white, I think. My husband always wanted one just like it.”

“There were three of them, out that afternoon?”

“That’s what made it memorable, that and their faces. Every other time, it was just Georgie and Darlene, all the time laughing, stuck on each other.”

“Their faces?”

“They looked scared to death. Georgie’s hands were tight on the wheel; I could see his knuckles popping, white as the color of his car. Darlene was up front, riding shotgun like always, but there was no giggling for her, not that day. She was staring straight ahead like she was willing the road to swallow her up. Rosemary was in back, hunching down toward one side, like she was holding at her stomach. Sick, maybe.”

“You told Lishkin they were driving away from the gas station?”

“All I said was they were out this way, and they were not exhibiting their normal demeanors.” She breathed heavily into the phone. “No way those kids did any killing. I didn’t know Georgie-he’d only been in town for a short time-but everyone said he was real mild-mannered, no burden to his teachers or to his parents.”

“Darlene?”

“Sweet-tempered girl full of spunk, an asset to her mother and that disadvantaged sister.”

“That was Alta?”

“A problem child. Mean-spirited, some said. Not similar in appearance or demeanor to the older two girls. People wondered about that.”

“Wondered, how?”

“There was talk. Always is, in a town like this. Martha Taylor and Roy Lishkin went way back, to when they were kids. People wondered about Alta, is all.”

“There was talk that Alta was Roy Lishkin’s child?”

“Bothersome talk, was all it ever amounted to. Gossip. Some said that’s why Herb left, that he found out. Theory was, that’s why the child acted up, that she’d found out as well. Martha used to bring her to town, but then she quit that when the girl started getting out of hand.” She stopped for a minute, then continued in a softer voice. “Darlene was an angel. She helped her mother with everything around that dust patch of a farm, and that included Alta. When Martha died, Darlene took charge right off, taking care of the two other girls.”

“What about Rosemary?”

“Always dreaming, head in a book. Even wrote one. A thin thing, but the folks at the high school made a fuss over it. There were mimeographs of it all over town. I tried reading it. Tacky thing, as I recall. I don’t expect she was of much help around that place, spending her time on such foolishness. Didn’t surprise me one bit when she took off, leaving Darlene stuck to that place and that poor, agitated child.”

“Did you think those kids happened upon the scene at that gas station?”

“Meaning, did they stop for gas, see the blood and the body? Then take off, because they were scared they’d be blamed? Bless you, sir.”

“For what?”

“For seeing that as a distinct possibility. That’s just what I told Roy Lishkin.”

“He didn’t write that down, either. He just noted it was a robbery gone bad.”

“You must be mistaken. He knew it was no robbery, gone bad or otherwise.”

“There was cash in the register?”

“There was no register, just a drawer beneath the counter. Anyone going out there to rob the place would have robbed the place, know what I mean?”

“You’re sure the cash drawer wasn’t emptied?”

“Darned sure. My cousin’s husband owned that gas station. He told Sheriff Roy he lost a fine young employee, but no cash.”

Roy Lishkin’s notes were wrong, saying that the cash drawer was empty.

Deliberately wrong.