Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 54.

My cell phone woke me. I’d slept through half of Wisconsin.

“What’s shaking?” Jenny Galecki asked.

“I’m headed back to Chicago.”

“Wounded, I just heard.”

“How did you hear?”

“Sources. How are you feeling?”

Her source had to be Plinnit. I didn’t know whether he was using her or she was using him. Most likely it was mutual.

“I’m feeling sharp enough to fence with you about releasing what I know,” I said cleverly.

“Everybody’s got the story: The police are looking for Darlene Taylor, Sweetie Fairbairn’s sister. Apparently, she’s no longer at home in Minnesota. I’m guessing you probably knew that first.”

Definitely her source was Plinnit.

“How’s your investigation into Rivertown citizen boards?” I asked, to change the subject.

“I’ll drop by tonight, after the broadcast.”

She gave me enough time to say no to that. When I didn’t, she said, “Until tonight,” and hung up.

“Where does she fit?” Leo asked the instant I clicked off.

“Who?” I asked, sounding dumber than an iron bar.

“The lovely, ambitious, and potentially man-eating Jennifer Gale? Or, as you now call her, Jenny.”

“Beats me, Leo.”

He looked over at me. “No, I meant how does she fit into this case?”

“She’s already cultivated Plinnit as a source, though she said everyone in Chicago now knows the police are looking for Darlene.”

“You going to tell her about the gas station?”

“I won’t have to. The old story will blow wide open when the press digs into Darlene’s background. Young Rosemary’s presence in that car, at that gas station, will come with it.”

“It would be tough to prove anything about that,” he said.

“I’ll bet that’s not what Darlene and Koros passed on. I’ll bet they got word to her that they could alibi each other, and make Sweetie the shooter.”

“Another reason to run?”

“On top of being blamed for everything else? I’d have run, too.”

We fell silent then, each of us content to watch the white road-dividing stripes slip under the front of the minivan. I imagined he was ready, like me, to let everything we’d learned slip away as well.

After a half hour, though, Leo had a question. “Did you deliberately forget to swing by and return Rosemary’s manuscript to that retired lady?”

“What I heard,” I said, “was those mimeographs were all over town, back in the day. If none survived, other than the one Koros must have had, and the one I forgot to return, well…” He couldn’t see me smiling because, by now, it was dark.

“Isn’t that suppression of evidence?” he asked, in his most sanctimonious voice. “After all, that manuscript could incriminate your client.”

“Damn,” I said, thinking of matches and a small fire.

I slept, on and off, for the next hours as we drove south through Wisconsin. Sometime around Rockford, Illinois, I remember waking up, and Leo asking if I was sure I could negotiate the turret by myself. He said he’d be happy to stay over.

I told him all I needed was Ho Hos, and I had plenty of those.

I didn’t tell him that Jennifer Gale had said she’d stop by.

It was ten thirty when we got to Rivertown. As we turned off Thompson Avenue, Leo said he’d drive to the airport the next day to turn in the minivan and get my Jeep. I told him I felt well enough to drive the Jeep now. He told me no one should ever feel well enough to drive my Jeep. There was logic to that. I gave him my keys.

He stopped the van halfway through the turn to the turret and turned on the high beams. The headlamps lit up the corner of the spit of land, and the turret beyond.

“Jenny’s Prius,” I said, of the car parked in front of the turret. “She said she was going to-”

“No. This side of the turret, back toward the river.”

I saw it, something small and shiny, glinting in the headlamps, lying on the ground. He eased the van forward.

“My blue plastic tarp,” I said. “It’s supposed to be covering the ladders around back.”

Leo stopped the van. “Look at the turret door.”

Even from a distance, I could see the long scratches around the lock, fresh and white against the dark wood. They looked like claw marks made by an animal.

“Someone was anxious to pay me a visit,” I said.

“Let’s call the cops.”

I looked at Jenny’s Prius. “In a moment.”

He pulled forward another twenty feet, angling the van to best shine the high beams on the tarp. I was just reaching for the door handle when his hand shot out and grabbed the back of my shirt collar.

“No,” he said.

The shiny plastic hadn’t been laid out flat on the ground. It was covering something. Something mounded.

I pushed his hand away, opened the door, and slid off the seat to stand on the ground. For a second, I teetered from the pain, and from what I knew, in my gut, was under the tarp.

“I’m calling the cops,” Leo’s voice said, from far away.

I headed for the tarp. There was no doubt what the shape was, covered up.

My right side was throbbing around the stitches. I moved slowly, suddenly in no hurry to see what was under that tarp.

I bent down, pulled back a corner.

I saw a woman’s naked foot.