Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 72.

She poured coffee into the two mugs on the table and pushed one closer to me.

I took another bite of the pie. “I’m sure glad I came.”

“Will I be glad you came?”

“I can leave, Ms. Fair-”

She stopped me with an abrupt shake of her head, and looked to smile at the white-haired man behind the grill window. He was whistling softly, in tune with Sinatra singing low on the radio, and watching us.

“Gus and I like the name Evie,” she said quietly.

“Evie it is,” I said. “Forever more.”

She took a moment to make up her mind about what was in my eyes, and then asked, “How did you find me?”

Without meaning to, I felt my fingers touch my face. I dropped my hand.

“It took me too long, but I finally remembered a picture postcard of a bridge, on the wall of the only sane room in a very swank penthouse. That postcard disappeared some time after the woman who lived there fled.”

“Did remembering that postcard have something to do with the scratches on your face?”

“They’re healing just fine.”

“I’d written ‘Hill’s Knob’ on the back of that card, so I’d never forget. That man”-she gestured at the grill window-“and his wife had been very kind to me once.”

“Alta took that postcard. If you wrote on the back of it, she knows you’re here.”

The shock I was expecting didn’t come. Instead, she looked out at the parking lot, cut from the darkness by only that one dim bulb. Behind us, Sinatra had stopped singing.

“Yes,” she said softly, to the glass.

“You’re not surprised?”

She turned to me. “You came to warn me?”

“Yes.”

Her face relaxed. “She was here.”

I waited, saying nothing.

“Two days ago,” she said, “she parked right out in front, came inside. It was around closing time, like now. She was dressed in blue jeans, plaid shirt, work boots. I took her for a man, a very short man. I walked up with a menu. She didn’t want it. She kept looking at my eyes until finally she just turned and went out the door.”

“By then you’d recognized her?”

“Absolutely not. Georgie said she’d died the summer I left. And the years had twisted her face fiercely, Mr. Elstrom. The years, and the anger.”

“She just drove away?”

A small noise came from across the diner. Gus had come out from behind the grill window, and had put a hand on the stainless steel coffee machine. He was about sixty, powerfully built, with biceps that hadn’t come from turning eggs. I would have bet there was nothing wrong with his ears, either.

His eyes weren’t on the coffeemaker. They were on her.

She shook her head at him almost imperceptibly. I had not yet become a threat. He gave her a small shrug and went back behind the grill window.

“She did not leave right away, Mr. Elstrom,” she went on. “She stood outside, leaning against her car, an old, beat-up tan thing. After five minutes, I began to wonder if she was sick. Other than Gus, there was no one in the diner, so I walked outside. Whip fast, she was up against me. She had a knife-but first, she had things to say.”

Her hands trembled as she refilled our cups from the carafe.

“I was dumbstruck; she wasn’t supposed to be alive. I sure never connected her with the TV reports of Darlene being found dead at your home. She started jabbering so fast and choppy I couldn’t make out all the words, but there was no mistaking her rage. Or her intent with that knife.”

She squeezed both hands around her coffee mug, maybe for the warmth. Two-handed, she brought the cup to her mouth, took a sip, and went on. “Darlene told her I’d gone off to make a fortune, and would come back for them. I might have said that; I would have said anything to get out of Hadlow. Alta said they waited years for me to bring them to a better life. I tried to tell Alta I’d spent most of my years moving from one town to another, waitressing, clerking retail, working always for small wages, barely getting by. She wouldn’t hear it. She kept chattering, spit flying out of her mouth, saying over and over it was my fault, them living hellish all those years.”

“Then Georgie called them?”

“That rat bastard,” she said, looking down at her coffee.

“He was doing well, in your employ.”

“Damned right. Several years earlier, he’d seen a picture of me in the Tribune. It was right after Silas had died. He came to the penthouse. He said he was down on his luck.”

“That was all? He didn’t threaten you with blackmail?”

Her eyes got a little wider, but she kept her face under control.

“About what?” she asked, watching my face to see what I knew.

“About anything,” I said.

She let it die. “I rented him an office on Wacker Drive, and gave him a retainer to watch over a few checking accounts. For a long time, it was good enough for him.”

“Until suddenly he got greedy?”

“Not so suddenly. I think he’d been waiting since day one for the right opportunity to shake out some big money. He saw his chance with poor Andrew. Georgie came to me, told me he’d discovered Andrew had embezzled a half-million dollars from the Symposium. He said he’d negotiated with Andrew; Andrew would leave, and pay back the money over time. All it took was my blessing. I didn’t think to question him, Mr. Elstrom. I was more shocked than anything.”

She looked at me with steady eyes. “But then I made things worse.”

“By not questioning?”

“By saying something stupid and rash. For some time, I’d been thinking about how burdensome my philanthropic life had become. There were so many requests to investigate, and never being absolutely sure which were worthwhile. I whined at Georgie, saying Andrew was the last straw, that maybe I should give away most of what I had. I could make last, major donations to charities I was already familiar with, and be done with all those hours. At that point, I’d made no final decision, Mr. Elstrom; I was merely feeling sorry for myself, in the wake of what I thought I’d learned about Andrew.”

“It sent Koros into action?”

“Like a rocket. He’d already wet his snout with that half million. He wanted more, but he’d have to act quick, before I gave everything away.”

“He called Darlene,” I said.

“Alta said when he told them I’d hit it rich, it was like I’d cut out their hearts. They didn’t need any convincing to come down to Chicago to help. I’d have to pay for those years they lost.”

“Alta was telling you all this while she was holding a knife to you?”

“Calm as could be, looking up with her wet eyes and her dead-smelling breath.”

I looked at the man looking back at me from the grill window. “Where was Gus?”

“Back in the restaurant, unaware,” she said, too quickly.

“He didn’t come to the door, wondering why you’d gone outside?” I asked. Gus was too observant, too watchful.

She kept her face calm. “Not a chance,” she said.

She took another sip of coffee. Her hands were steady and sure now. “It was a sick idea Georgie had come up with. Apparently, he’d saved a copy of a little novel I wrote in high school, about a clown who died, falling off a roof. I’d given him that copy. It had my handwriting and fingerprints on it, perfect for their needs.”

“Sweetie Rose.”

She set down her coffee cup slowly. “How could you know that?” she whispered.

“I went to Hadlow.”

“Hadlow?” she managed, but we were no longer talking about a high school girl’s novel. She was pressing for what I knew of a gas station killing.

“No big deal,” I said. “Miss Mason loaned me the mimeographed copy you gave her. It’s since been burned.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then, “Alta had Georgie’s copy. It’s been destroyed, too.”

We were fencing, she and I. I’d been too long going in circles in Chicago and in Indiana; she’d been too long living cautiously, running from Hadlow.

“James Stitts?” I asked.

“I never did see Darlene, but I expect she dyed her hair to match mine, and Georgie put her in a limousine to be seen hiring Mr. Stitts at his house.” She paused, then, “As you reported to me, back in my other life.”

“Georgie followed him up on that roof and cut his rope?”

“He was on another roof, taking pictures. They were a little out of focus, but they were meant to leave no doubt who was up on that hardware building.”

“A woman who looked just like you, cutting the rope?”

She nodded. “As teenagers, me and Darlene looked like twins. Through a long camera lens, from some distance away, she could pass perfectly for me.”

“You saw these pictures?”

For a moment she studied the scratches on my face. Then she said, “Yes. Alta had them in her car, with the negatives, and with that mimeograph of the story I wrote in high school.”

“For her to blackmail you.”

“For Georgie and Darlene to blackmail me. Darlene told Alta she wanted every nickel I had, but she also wanted me left alive, ruined, so I’d have to live like they did.”

“What did Alta want?”

“She wanted me dead. She wanted everybody dead.” She shivered. “Alta was the smartest of us all, but my mother used to say Alta was prone to sudden attacks of understandable anger. My father had a sickness in his head. Or an anger. He sexually abused Alta from a very young age, though my mother tried hard to shield Darlene and myself from knowing that.”

“And you? Darlene?”

“He never touched us.”

“Alta wasn’t his child,” I said.

“She sure didn’t look like Darlene and me. Sheriff Roy would stop by, from time to time, always when my father was somewhere else. I could see Roy’s fondness for my mother. I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Who killed your father?”

“Why do you think he was killed?” she asked slowly.

“He was buried facedown in your town cemetery. He didn’t take off.”

She leaned across the table. “How can you know that?”

“Traces of your DNA were found on me and a Chicago policeman after we were attacked in your penthouse.” Again, without realizing, my fingers had reached up to touch my face. “By then, Darlene was dead. So was Alta, for years, or so everyone believed. That left you as the only person who could have left that DNA. Since I’ve never seen you as a killer, that DNA meant Alta was still alive. I drove up to Hadlow to take a peek under the ground. A man was in Alta’s grave, facedown.”

“He was working on a pump. Alta caved in his head with a shovel. We found her standing over him, calm as could be. There was a metal storage box in the barn, meant for long-handled tools. We put him in that, and dragged it to the edge of the woods. Mama and Darlene buried him, while I sat with Alta in the house. She had blood on her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her mind had disengaged from what she’d done. Mama never let her go back to school, for fear of what she might say. She told Darlene and me to say our father had taken off.”

“Why put him in the box facedown?”

“We didn’t want to see his eyes. Who moved him from our place to the cemetery?”

“For that, we have to talk about the gas station,” I said.

She paused, and then nodded.

“Darlene, with Roy Lishkin’s unknowing help, moved him,” I said. “Your mother’s death, and then all of you being seen near that gas station, and then Georgie and you taking off must have set him to wondering. He probably started making unannounced trips to your farm. Darlene must have feared it would only be a matter of time before Alta would let something slip about your father, or the young man at the gas station. So Darlene came up with a way to shut down the gas station investigation, and at the same time, get rid of a potentially risky corpse buried out by the woods. She dug up your father, hosed off the box, told Lishkin that Alta had died and that she was to be buried on the cheap, in that tin box. I doubt Lishkin asked any questions. He must have wanted everything to be over, too. He pulled some strings, and the box was buried quickly, and quietly, at the edge of the cemetery.”

“Everybody knows about my father, and Alta, and the gas station, now?”

“Only the current sheriff and a couple of her deputies know who was in that grave. The sheriff won’t say anything. Roy Lishkin was her grandfather. She doesn’t want anyone pointing fingers at him about your father’s death. As far as the gas station, the only ones left who might know anything are Sweetie Fairbairn, who apparently is gone for good, and of course Alta…”

“My father ruined Alta’s life, Mr. Elstrom. Her killing him was understandable, in a certain sick way.”

“Your mother died just a few months before the gas station.”

“Alta didn’t kill my mother. She fell, struck her head, just as we told Sheriff Roy.” She took a slow sip of coffee. “Will knowing all this really give you peace?”

“Peace is not a reasonable expectancy, but I am more than curious.”

“It was one of those spring days that can set the young on fire,” she said. “Alta screamed to go along when Georgie came by for Darlene. Darlene didn’t see any harm, so long as I came, too, to watch Alta. That was fine with me. There were worse things than riding around in Georgie’s convertible.”

“The gun?”

“Georgie’s dad got death threats from shutting down mills, putting folks out of work. He kept a revolver locked in the glove box. Georgie took it out, waved it around just to show off, and put it right back.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He forgot to lock it up. Certainly none of us thought it was loaded.”

She took a paper napkin from the chrome dispenser on the table and dabbed at her eyes.

“We stopped at that gas station for Cokes,” she said. “Alta was supposed to stay in the car. The rest of us went in. We bought the Cokes, and a Baby Ruth. Alta loved Baby Ruths. We’d just paid, when there was Alta, with that gun. She fired four times. The noise shocked the hell out of her, but she kept pulling the trigger. For the noise, I always thought; she loved the damned noise. At first, we didn’t know what she was shooting at; we were looking only at Alta. Then the poor young man made a noise, a horrible, grunting noise. He went down. He was gut shot, bleeding like hell. Georgie was the only one who thought to move. Darlene and me, we were frozen like statues. Georgie grabbed the gun, yelled at us to get in the car. I pushed Alta into the back, damned near sat on her to keep her down, and we flew out of there.”

She gave out a small sob.

“Evie?” the man called from the window.

She waved for him to stay away. “I’m fine, Gus. Fine.”

“No cops?” I asked.

She pulled out another napkin and rubbed at her eyes. “Darlene said they’d charge her and me and Georgie as accessories to murder. And with our mother so recently dead, they’d start poking around, wondering about our father. They’d find him in the woods, buried like a dog, she said. Georgie got bug-eyed hearing that; he didn’t know anything about Alta killing my father. Anyway, Darlene said there’d be more murder charges. Newspaper people would be everywhere. We’d be freaks, dirt-poor sickies from Dirt Bag, Minnesota. We’d be in prison for the rest of our lives. No sir, we didn’t call Sheriff Roy.”

“You wouldn’t have been charged.”

“I wasn’t taking that risk. I made up my mind right there in that convertible. I was legal, sixteen. If we could get away from that gas station without getting caught, and act normal for a couple of months, I’d be gone at the end of the school year. Besides, no way Georgie wanted to tell, either. It was his dad’s gun; his father could be blamed as an accessory, or something.”

I touched my side, where I’d been shot. “What happened to the gun?”

“Darlene took it from Georgie. He didn’t mind.”

“It’s gone now, along with the bullets that had been in the crime file all these years. Another loose end Ellie Ball doesn’t want lying around.”

She looked out the window again, at the darkness. “It was all so self-serving, of course. Georgie and me, leaving, we were looking out for ourselves.”

“And Darlene?”

“She was the only one who did the right thing. She stayed in Hadlow, looking out for Alta.”

For a minute, neither of us said anything.

“Remember I told you to go to the cops.” I said, finally. “That might still be good advice, as opposed to running.”

She turned from the window. “We get Channel 8 on cable here. I know what’s going on in Chicago. I go back, I’m in court for the rest of my life, trying to explain how I had nothing to do with killing poor Andrew, Mr. Stitts, Bob Norton, or even Georgie and Darlene. It would take a lifetime to explain all that. Then there’s all that money I gave away. Silas had no close relatives; just shirttail people he’d never even met. Court for the rest of my life on that, too. Hadlow? Court there, as well. And me with no money to pay lawyers for any of it. No, I can’t go back.”

“Especially since the likelihood of Alta ever corroborating your story is… remote?”

Gus had again come out to the counter, and was watching us with unblinking eyes. He looked strong enough to have quickly snapped a knife out of a stunted woman’s hand; cunning enough to know back roads that led to empty lands and hidden lakes, places so remote a smart-thinking person could dispose of a body and a car so that they would never be discovered.

“I’ve already paid plenty, Mr. Elstrom,” she said. “I paid with years of being afraid someone would come after me for being an accomplice to the murder of my father or that young man at that gas station. I paid, hiring Georgie Korozakis, knowing he could make up a story about that gas station any damned time he felt like it. I paid, thinking it was poor Andrew Fill who stole my money, then realizing it was my money that got him killed. I paid, knowing Mr. Stitts went off that roof because my sister wanted my money. And I paid, finding Bob Norton lying in my living room, feeling the wet of his life bleed out of him. I paid all that, and it still wasn’t enough.”

“They never demanded money?”

“I screamed at Alta, knife be damned, ‘Why didn’t you just ask for the money?’ The bitch just rolled her vicious, ugly eyes. ‘Georgie wanted you ripened to run.’”

“Ripened to leave it all behind, so he could make it look like you’d taken it all with you.”

“I imagine he’d funnied up some documents to let him loot Silas’s money with ease.”

“Killing you outright was too risky, because that would lead to probate, and Darlene wouldn’t get anything if you’d made out a will. You had to be set off running.” I nodded in admiration of the plan. “It was an even better scheme than they knew, because you running also took care of the problem of you and Silas not being married. If you were found dead, that would be exposed, and there’d be no money for anyone except his blood kin.”

“Too bad they never found that out, the damned greedy fools,” she said.

“They threatened to alibi each other for the gas station killing, and say you’d done the shooting?”

“And that I’d killed my father. Plus, they had those pictures that supposedly showed me up on the roof, cutting the rope. Combined with your testimony saying you’d found me covered with Bob Norton’s blood, kneeling over his corpse, and Georgie saying I certainly had motive to kill poor Andrew, the case against me would be too damning to survive.” She put her head in her hands. “There was nothing I could do but run.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Except give away all your money, on your way out the door.”

“As I said, I’d been thinking about it anyway. I thought it would stop the killing.” She looked at me defiantly, her eyes clear now. “I don’t grieve that it led to Alta killing Darlene and Georgie.”

“She killed them to get that half million?”

“I don’t think Alta found that money, or even cared about it. It wasn’t in her car. I’ll bet the police will locate it in one of Georgie’s accounts. Alta killed Darlene and Georgie to cover her own tracks.”

“Like she was going to kill you?”

“No. Killing me was to be revenge, plain and simple. Georgie killed Andrew, but Alta and Darlene, one or the other or both, killed Mr. Stitts and Bob Norton.”

She sipped at her coffee, and I finished my pie.

“I don’t know what more I can tell you, Mr. Elstrom,” she said finally.

“Why not marry Silas Fairbairn?”

Her face brightened at the mention of his name. “He wanted to, brought it up all the time. I kept telling him I didn’t want folks to think I was after his money. ‘Let them think that, if their nasty minds demand it,’ he’d say. I’d say, ‘Never mind. We’ve got each other, as is.’”

“That wasn’t your reason, though.”

“If it ever got out that I’d been involved in a killing when I was a kid, there would be no end to the scandal. He had me; I had him. It was enough.”

A car pulled into the parking lot. An elderly couple came into the diner and took the first booth by the door.

She lowered her voice. “Remember, Mr. Elstrom: Alta came here with a knife.”

“There’s a policeman in Chicago, named Plinnit,” I said. “He’s putting warrants out on Sweetie Fairbairn for everything he can think of, right down to assaulting me.”

She raised her eyebrows behind the cartoonish red glasses. “Little ol’ me?” she asked, forcing a smile.

“The DNA that was found under my fingernails, that partially matches yours? It’s enough for some of the warrants. As is a grainy security video from the lobby of the Wilbur Wright, showing you going up to your penthouse, twice, just before I discovered you with Bob Norton’s body.”

“Twice?” She shook her head. “The first time had to be Darlene.”

She watched Gus bring menus to the couple in the booth. “I helped take care of his wife when she was dying, years ago. He can alibi me for every minute I need, as can his brothers.”

“Plinnit can play loose with the facts. For now, he’s focused only on your apprehension.”

“I know how to travel, Mr. Elstrom.”

I started to ease out of the booth.

She put her hand hard on my wrist. “Mr. Elstrom?” she asked.

“This has to be the best place for pie in four counties, exactly as advertised, though I’ll never admit to being here to learn that, should anyone ever ask.”

We walked together, toward the door.

“No sir,” she said, when I stopped at the cash register to peel off some of the last of Leo’s money. “In fact…” She went through the swinging door to the back, coming out a couple of minutes later with a box.

“I’m afraid it’s all I have to give, now,” she said.

I thanked her and took the box out to the Jeep.

For a time I drove, enjoying the steady sound of the engine, and the dark of the night, and the promise that somehow, my life would sort out once I got back to Rivertown.

And, for a time, I enjoyed glancing down at the white box on the seat beside me, savoring the last mystery of Sweetie Fairbairn. Finally, I could stand it no more. I pulled to the side of the deserted country road and opened the box.

Inside, as I’d expected, was an apple pie.

On top, as I’d hoped, were layered several slices of Velveeta.

I laughed with relief, certain that I could not imagine a more righteous resolution to the day.

Jack Fredrickson

Jack Fredrickson's first Dek Elstrom mystery, A Safe Place for Dying, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. His short fiction has appeared in the acclaimed Chicago Blues and in Michael Connelly's Burden of the Badge anthologies. He lives with his wife, Susan, west of Chicago, where he is crafting the next Dek Elstrom novel.