Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 58.

Though she couldn’t have gotten much sleep, Jenny Galecki looked every bit a fresh, rested Jennifer Gale that afternoon. Her report led the noon broadcast, beginning with a very short video of several men leaning over the shiny blue tarp. Featured prominently in the center of the frame was me, mouth agape. I looked like someone who’d been thrown off a bus.

She reported that the dead woman had not yet been identified, but since the body had been found at the home of Vlodek Elstrom, the associate of Sweetie Fairbairn’s who’d discovered her murdered bodyguard, police suspected the newest killing was also linked to Ms. Fairbairn’s disappearance.

She did not say that any of that was sure to renew police interest in me as a suspect.

I called Leo and asked him to drive me to get the Jeep, pronto.

“You’re not going to believe what’s happening,” he said.

“Jennifer Gale, on the news. I saw.”

“No, I mean Ma.”

“She all right?”

“She’s still redecorating. As for you coming along to get the Jeep, forget it. Endora’s much better company. We’re leaving now.”

“I insist.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. You gave me your keys last night, remember?”

There was no arguing with that. The day had become a game of movable keys. I told him to hurry up.

I called Plinnit’s cell phone. It went right to voice mail. I left him a message, asking him to call me. Then I called his precinct.

“He’s off for the long weekend,” a woman, young-voiced, said.

It took me a minute to remember it was the Fourth of July. “I have to talk to him.”

“He’s off for the long weekend, Mr. Elstrom,” she said again, this time testily. “Can someone else help you?”

“Plinnit has the background.”

“He’s off for-”

I stopped her third swing. “Tell Plinnit that I’m going to break into a crime scene, and maybe risk getting killed. He’ll never be able to put me behind bars if I’m dead.” I did not mention that Sweetie’s keys were missing. It would only unnecessarily irritate him.

“Are you crazy?” the young-voiced woman asked.

“Have a great day,” I said, and hung up.

Plinnit called in five minutes. “Did your sleepover end badly?”

I told him I wanted another look around Sweetie Fairbairn’s penthouse.

“You want me to call the Wilbur Wright, say it’s OK for you to go in?”

“Yes.”

“To look for what?”

“Anything that might tell me where Sweetie Fairbairn is.”

“Why now?”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Why call now for my permission to enter Sweeetie Fairbairn’s penthouse? Last time, you marched in there alone, brazenly unlocked the elevator using keys you no doubt merely overlooked giving to us, and rode up like you owned the place.”

I started to sputter, summoning indignation, but he cut me off. “That video camera in the lobby we talked about, the one that had you entering the penthouse the day Robert Norton was killed? We can play you a more recent tape, showing you coming back, using the keys you’re pretending to be confused about, the ones that have Sweetie Fairbairn’s initials on them.”

“The concierge,” I managed.

“Of course the concierge,” he said, laughing. “He called us as soon as you went up.”

“Why didn’t you come for me?”

“I had a man in the lobby by the time you came down. He advised that you looked too stupid to be bringing anything out with you. I concurred, telling him you’re too stupid to be a killer as well.”

“Thank you,” I said stupidly. Then, “The keys are missing.”

“That’s why your visitor broke in last night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me what else you haven’t yet told me, Elstrom.”

I told him about the manuscript Sweetie Fairbairn had written in high school, and how that was meant to point to Sweetie as having murdered James Stitts.

“Darlene Taylor and George Koros came at her quite deliberately,” I said. “They wanted her to run, and to stay gone, so they could be thorough, and steal every nickel she had.”

I stopped then, wondering if I should tell him about the gas station incident, and a too-fast investigation by Sheriff Roy Lishkin, who may have been Alta’s father. I decided anything Plinnit learned about that he could get from Ellie Ball. Or from the press.

“It was Darlene under that tarp?” I asked.

“Ellie Ball confirmed it from the photo I sent her.”

“Now, about my getting into Sweetie’s penthouse…?”

“You still haven’t told me what you hope to find.”

“Whatever Darlene’s killer was looking for at my place.”

“Which is?”

“Some clue to where Sweetie Fairbairn ran.”

“You think Darlene’s killer left your turret with Sweetie’s keys, and used them to get into her penthouse?”

“It’s worth a look.”

He stopped to think, then said, “I can’t put civilians in jeopardy.”

“Put a man at the Wilbur Wright, maybe even up in Sweetie’s penthouse. Call the manager, or the concierge, tell him to let me in.”

“How’s that help me?”

“I find Sweetie, you get answers, and cooler air on the back of your neck.”

“How about whatever you find you turn over to me, and I’ll get my own answers from Sweetie Fairbairn?”

“I might have issues with that.”

He sighed. “First I’ll tell the officers I’ve got watching you that you’re deranged. Then I’ll think. Then maybe I’ll call you back.”

Leo pulled the Jeep onto the lawn an hour later. Endora had followed in the Porsche, with the top down.

“Care to come up for coffee?” I called out the second-floor window. I wanted company. I’d been counting minutes, waiting for Plinnit to call.

“You made fresh?” Leo asked, getting into the passenger’s seat of his Porsche.

“I can make fresh.”

“With different beans and a different pot and different water?”

“We could have Ho Hos, too.”

“Jeep key’s under the mat,” he said, “though I can’t imagine anyone stealing it.”

Endora called up to add that they had plans. Obviously, Leo had poisoned her mind about my coffee.

They took off, in love with each other and, apparently, good coffee.

Across the spit of land, the dark blue Buick had been replaced by a maroon Chevrolet Impala.

More minutes, and then more hours, dragged. Then, two hours before dusk, Plinnit called and said I could go to the Wilbur Wright.