09 Dead Man Running, page 9
I drove out one morning to check on the builders and what would be our new house someday soon. The frame was up, the subfloor was finished, and it looked as though they were working on the roof. It was hard to believe it would actually look like a house and have drywall and carpeting in just a few short months. I pulled my car into the gravel and mud driveway. As soon as the guys saw me, they all stopped and waved.
The frame sat on fifteen acres of land. Of course, ten of that was woods, so Rudy would only have five acres to mow. I’d already picked out a spot for the chickens, and Rachel had more than once hinted at a great place for stables. She’d never actually asked to have a horse put in the stables, but I could only imagine that that would be the next request.
The house itself was nothing overly elaborate. I couldn’t see the point in building a huge house with six bedrooms when Rachel would leave for college in four years. So we went with a three-bedroom, two-bath model, but with a finished basement where Rachel could have her room until she went off to college. I took the attic for my office because I liked to be up high, to be able to look out. I’d requested more closets and more storage, and it would be great not to have my desk in our bedroom anymore, but otherwise the main difference between the new house and the one we lived in now was that each room was a few feet bigger all around. That and the fact that I’d had a small mother-in-law’s quarters built onto the back, and no, they aren’t for my mother-in-law. They aren’t even for my own mother. They’re for my grandmother Gert. She’s getting on, and I thought she’d like to live out in the country with family but still have privacy for the last years of her life.
It seems kind of silly to acquire so many objects in life when in the end you downsize to “quarters” off somebody else’s house or even just a room in one of your children’s homes. I guess that’s why I didn’t really go all extravagant on this house, the way I could have. Sylvia’s money—my inheritance—allowed me to have a huge house, even the big old Gothic thing that I dreamed about as a girl, but I no longer saw the point.
“How’s it going, Eg?” I asked.
Egbert Hanshaw is a native of New Kassel and about six years older than I am. His little brother had been in my class. Eg owns Hanshaw Construction with his uncle Manley. He wears a shark tooth around his neck, wrapped with a piece of wire and hanging from a chain. Legend has it that it’s the very tooth that he pulled out of his arm after being attacked by a shark in Hawaii. He really had been attacked. I’ve seen the scars.
“It’s going great, Torie,” he said. “Weather has been working with us. I think you’ll be moving in shortly after the first of the year.” He shoved his tan work boot into a clump of dried dirt.
“Wonderful,” I said, and hugged myself. It was a bit chilly today, one of those silver-gray overcast days that remind me of death.
“We did have some theft, though,” he said. “I was going to call Rudy tonight and let him know about it.”
“What was stolen? Did you call Colin?”
“Yeah, I called him. He said he’d send somebody out to check on it.”
“Well, what did they take?” I asked, a little concerned.
“Five bags of concrete mix, some two-by-fours, coupla tools.”
“Don’t you lock everything up or take it with you?” I asked.
“Whoever did this did it at lunchtime. Yesterday, most of us went to Wisteria for a burger, left two guys here. Evidently the two guys decided to take a walk up the creek. You know, to stretch their legs and whatnot. When I got back, they were sitting out here on the backs of the trucks, so I didn’t even know they’d left. Nobody realized anything was missing until it was time to go home. Then they fessed up that they hadn’t been on-site the whole time,” he said.
“Could they have been the ones who stole the stuff in the first place?” I asked, blowing warm breath into my fingers.
“I thought that, too. I checked their trucks. If they stole it, they had somebody come and get the stuff, or they drove it off the property before we all got back from lunch. I really don’t think they did it, but I guess you never know,” he said.
“Huh,” I said and looked around.
“Really, the stuff probably didn’t come to two hundred bucks. Not sure you wanna press charges and all that even if they catch whoever it was,” he said.
“Well, the tools aren’t mine,” I said. “They’re yours. The concrete and wood are the only things I paid for.”
“That’s true,” he said. He looked eager to get back to the job. Even though he had on one of those thick, heavy flannel shirts and a hooded sweatshirt under it, he seemed to be a bit chilled. Moving around would warm him up, so I let him get back to work.
“I just want to look around a second, okay? Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Not a problem,” he said. He handed me a hard hat.
I plopped it on my head and walked around where the back of the house would be. The clear water in the creek meandered about an acre away from what would be the back patio. The front of the house had a big white porch. I walked around the side of the house and through an opening in the frame. I waved at one of the workers and went into the house and up two flights of stairs. Guys kept telling me to watch my step as I went, because the stairs weren’t enclosed yet. When I reached the “attic,” I looked out across the land and was happy. A peaceful feeling settled in my chest despite the fact that since there were no walls, all I had to do was step through the two-by-fours and I would free-fall three stories to the ground. I realized that I was going to get to see this gorgeous sight every time I looked out my office window.
The orange and red leaves of autumn splotched across the woods, almost like flowers in bloom. An opening in the trees, right behind the creek, became a pasture. That was ours, too. I looked to the right and saw the road run in front of what would be the yard. A large, cleared pasture was across the county road from our property. Ironically, it was part of Eg Hanshaw’s land. He owns about thirty acres. If you drove half a mile down the road by his mailbox, you’d find his unique, self-built mansion sitting among several large oak trees and about four outbuildings. I couldn’t see his house from ours because of the swell of a few hills. I guessed Eg would make sure my house looked good, though, since he’d have to look at it every day when he came and went from his property.
I sighed, content. Then I went down the stairs, gave back the hard hat, and went to work. Friday night we were having the hayrides to kick off the second weekend of the Octoberfest. I needed to make sure everything was in order and that we had plenty of volunteers to drive the tractors and ride the horses and keep the bonfire burning.
I arrived at the Gaheimer House just after ten, and Stephanie greeted me at the door with Jimmy wrapped in a sling. “Hi, sweetie,” I said to the baby. He smiled and, of course, I smiled. I find it impossible not to smile at a baby who’s smiling at me. For one thing, it’s one of the purest moments in a person’s life. When else can you take a person’s emotion at face value? Only with a baby. Babies have no hidden agendas. None whatsoever.
“You got a package from your aunt up in Minnesota,” Stephanie said.
“Wonder why she sent it here instead of the house?” I asked.
“Maybe she thought you might have moved already, and she just wanted to make sure you got it,” she said.
We made our way back to the office, where I found a very large box sitting on my desk. “You’re probably right,” I said. I opened the box. Inside were six bottles of wine from Northern Vineyards. “Oh, how sweet.”
I pulled out a bottle and read the label.
“When Rudy and I were up there last time, she served some of this at dinner. We loved it, and you can only get it from the winery. None of the stores down here carry it,” I said. “Or can order it, for that matter.”
I read the note.
Was at the winery the other day and thought of you.
Hope things are good with you and Rudy. Please visit again soon.
Love, Aunt Sissy.
“Wow,” I said. “I miss her.”
“I haven’t gotten to meet her yet,” Steph said.
I suddenly felt horrible. I sometimes forgot that my dad’s family was her family, too. I reached in and took one of the bottles of wine out of the case and handed it to her. “Here,” I said. “It’s from Aunt Sissy.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I got my own box.”
“What?” I said.
“She sent me a sampler box and told me to come up and visit her some time,” she said. She bit her lip as if the thought made her both nervous and giddy.
“Oh, that was really sweet. See why she’s my favorite aunt?” I said. “Well, we’ll just all have to go up together and see her.”
“Really? You mean it? You’ll go up with me? Because I would feel really weird going up to visit her without having met her first, but if you and Rudy are along, it won’t seem so weird,” she said.
“Yes, um, do you want to go in the winter and see snow?” I asked.
She laughed. “You’ll do anything to see snow, won’t you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t commit murder,” I said.
“Speaking of which,” Colin said from the doorway.
I jumped, Stephanie squealed, and Jimmy started crying.
“Jesus, Colin. Look, you made the baby cry. What do you want?” I asked.
“Just wanted to let you know that an ID came back on the body that fell from the float. He had a record a mile long,” he said, leaning up against the doorframe. “I mean, we’re talking extortion, three counts of assault and battery, two counts of manslaughter that conveniently got thrown out on a technicality. All sorts of stuff.”
My mouth was open. I glanced at Stephanie, and so was hers. Jimmy’s was open, too, but that was because he was wailing. “What was he doing in New Kassel? What was he doing in the parade?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Colin said. “I’m working on that.”
“What about the prints on the binoculars you found in the mayor’s backyard?” I asked.
“They don’t match the dead guy’s,” he said. “So far, I haven’t found a match for them in the system.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Weird part,” he said. “The dead guy was from Chicago. I mean, his current driver’s license was from Illinois. Chicago! He wasn’t even from Missouri. Why would a guy from Chicago, Illinois, be snooping around in our warehouse with floats for a parade, and why would he end up dead?”
“Tourist?” Stephanie asked.
“Well, if he was a tourist, he was completely alone, dressed in an expensive suit—damned Armani suit, to boot—and, as far as I can tell, didn’t even have a hotel room. There was a call that came in about an abandoned rental car,” Colin said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up in Arnold. At Richardson Road and Highway 55. You know that commuter parking lot right there?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That’s where they found it. It was his.”
“So, does this dead guy have a name?” I asked.
“Vincent Ricardo Baietto. Better known as Vinnie ‘the Gun’ Baietto.”
“Huh?” Stephanie asked.
“What?” I sat down.
“A hit man. From Chicago. In New Kassel,” Colin said.
“Oh, I really hope he was just in town for the fudge and the hayrides,” I said, and gulped.
“I suppose stranger things have happened,” Colin said, “but something tells me he wasn’t here for the fudge.”
“Why?” Stephanie asked.
“Well, because he’s dead, for one thing,” Colin stated with such matter-of-factness that I almost laughed.
“This is surreal,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “Look, Torie, have you seen anything strange going on in town, other than the guys you’ve seen spying on Bill?”
“Isn’t that enough?” I asked.
Just then my phone rang. I answered it, and Stephanie excused herself to try to get Jimmy to stop crying. Colin sat down in the chair opposite my desk and played with the fraying edges of the upholstery. He was in full uniform today. I wondered how many more times I’d get to see that before he became mayor—because as much as I wanted him to stay sheriff, I was voting for him for mayor, and so was everybody else I knew.
“It’s Eleanore,” a voice said. I was so lost in my thoughts, I’d forgotten I’d actually picked up and answered the phone.
“Yeah?” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“A hit man just checked into my bed-and-breakfast,” she said in a panic. “Torie? Do hit men stay in bed-and-breakfasts? I mean, I thought they stayed in sleazy highway motels with cockroaches and stained toilets.”
“Wait, wait, slow down. What makes you think this guy is a hit man?” I asked. Colin almost jumped out of the chair.
“His name is Tito de Rosa, he paid in cash, and he’s wearing expensive cologne and shiny shoes.”
“Eleanore, he could be a salesman, for crying out loud.”
“How many salesmen pack a Gluck? Huh? Tell me that one, Miss Know-It-All.”
“You mean a Glock?”
“Yes, a Glock.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Colin looked at me as if I’d just announced the Virgin Mary was going to be on Letterman.
“Eleanore has a hit man staying in her bed-and-breakfast.” I couldn’t believe I kept a straight face.
Eleanore met us at the front door of the Murdoch Inn. I love the Murdoch Inn. It’s one of those buildings that, as a child, you think is magical and full of princesses. It has turrets and latticework and climbing roses. Then you grow up and realize that crazy women who wear clothes that look like plants actually live in them.
“Act casual,” Eleanore said as we approached.
“Eleanore,” Colin said, “Torie mentioned he had a weapon?”
She nodded her head, and her pumpkin earrings bounced. “Yes. A Gluck.”
“How do you know what kind of weapon it is?” I asked.
“Really, Torie. I have a satellite dish. Don’t you?”
Actually, no. I have cable, and that just came about in the last year or two.
Colin sighed heavily and placed his thumb on his gun holster. He always does that when he’s concerned. It’s like a mental check that yes, his weapon is still there. “All right, you stay here, Torie. I’m going to go up and have a talk with him.”
“I’m not staying here,” I said. “Colin, this is my chance to see a real live hit man! When will that ever happen again?”
“You don’t know that he’s a hit man,” Colin said. “You’re not going.”
“Why not?” I asked, and stomped my foot.
“You are not a deputy,” he said. “At all.”
“You could deputize me right now,” I said.
He laughed. “Not on your life!”
I crossed my arms, completely unhappy with his decision.
He disappeared into the Murdoch Inn, and Eleanore and I exchanged worried glances. “I’m afraid,” she said. “What if the guy kills me in my sleep?”
“Well, look at it this way, Eleanore. At least we’ll know who did it.”
“That’s true,” she said. “And oddly comforting.”
A few minutes later, Colin emerged from the Murdoch Inn, looking really ticked off. I’ve seen that look before, sort of a mixture of anger and determination—a serious combination in a man of his size. “The gun is registered.” He held it out in a hand towel.
“Hey, that’s one of the towels from the inn!” Eleanore said.
“I’ll return it,” Colin said. “I promise. I told him I wanted to keep the gun until he left town. He didn’t argue with me. Claims he’s an insurance salesman and carries the gun for protection.”
“Jeez, the guy never heard of pepper spray?” I asked.
“He also happens to be a gun collector,” Colin said.
“You buy that?” I asked.
“Not one bit,” he said. “But, he’s surrendered his weapon. All I can do is sit and wait to see what he does. I’ll put Deputy Counts on him.”
My heart stopped in my throat. “D-did you say Deputy Counts?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She decided to jump ship now. Said even if I lost the mayor’s race and she didn’t get to become sheriff, she wanted to work for me. She’s now a bona fide deputy of Granite County.”
Colin walked off down the steps, and I just sat down on the porch, right where I was. Eleanore patted me on the head. “You want some Scotch?” she asked.
Ten
I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book on the history of gypsies in medieval Europe when Rachel came in and sat down across from me. She didn’t say a word, she only sighed. My mom-sense went into overdrive almost immediately. For one thing, a sigh is a big deal in teenage land, and for another, Rachel usually sits down and starts rattling on about people at school, favorite movies or actors, or what horrible atrocity her siblings have subjected her to recently. Whether I want to hear these things or not. No matter if I’m reading, on the phone, or hanging upside down and gagged. Rachel talks. Period. Something was definitely up. I placed my gas receipt in the book as a bookmark and looked up at her. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been my kid for how long?” I asked.
“Ever since I was born,” she said, giggling.
“You really think that big dramatic sigh and then a ‘nothing’ is going to fly with me? Huh?” I asked.
“No,” she said. Her face turned red. My first instinct was to think of Riley. Of course. Had he been squeezing something other than her hands? I’d kill him. Okay, I wouldn’t really, but this is a very small town, and I can inflict damage.
“I’ve been thinking about that dead guy,” she said.
“I thought you might,” I said, relieved that Riley had not acted improperly. At least, if he had, that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure being relieved was appropriate.
