Rocket Science (16 page)

“Vernon!” shouted Floyd from the house. “Did you fall in? We need you in here.”

“Coming!” I yelled. The computational rocket didn’t seem to have anything more to say right then, so I abandoned my business in the outhouse.

“Next time use the darned chamber pot,” Floyd called from the kitchen as I stepped on to the porch.

Floyd, Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville were still sitting around the dining table. After visiting the outhouse and finally learning some answers about the computational rocket, however tantalizing they might be, I was starting to feel better. The cup of coffee Floyd handed me helped even more.

“Vinnie,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Floyd has asked Mama and me to stay out of the barn. So far, I’ve respected his wishes. But you getting shot at and everything — that puts all of us in a serious position. I need to know what you have in there — whether it’s money, or something you stole. It don’t matter, but you got to tell me.”

I looked at Floyd. Mr. Bellamy’s sudden transition to the bloom of tough-minded health still concerned me. “What have you told him?”

“Nothing specific,” said Floyd. “So you go ahead and tell it your way.”

I rubbed my forehead. The computational rocket had asked me to keep its existence a secret, but it was sitting forty yards away from here in a barn with door blown off. There was no secret to keep, at least not with the men at this table. If I lied, it would go badly for me. I had to tell them everything they already knew, and balance the rest.

“Mr. Bellamy, it’s like this. Floyd brought something home from Europe, a special kind of airplane the Germans had been working on.” That wasn’t actually untrue, although it was far enough from the complete truth as to be a lie. “I don’t know that he actually stole it, but it’s not rightfully his. Should have gone to the government as soon as it was found.” I shot Floyd a meaningful glance, but he was busy staring at the ceiling. “Anyway, near as I can tell there’s Nazi agents here in Butler County looking for that special airplane, and there’s US Army investigators looking for the Nazis.”

“And just who did you run over in the Cadillac?” asked Mr. Neville.

“At the time, I thought he was a Nazi, but now I think he might really have been from the Army.”

“You couldn’t tell the difference?” asked Mr. Bellamy.

“Something Sheriff Hauptmann said confused me.” I wasn’t going to call Hauptmann a liar in front of these men, but I just couldn’t quote him.

Mr. Neville leaned his elbows on the table at set his chin in his hands. I had the sense of being appraised again, as if he were deciding whether to raise or lower my value. “Why the hell were you talking to the Sheriff?”

I edited the story for their consumption. Floyd and Mr. Bellamy already knew some of it anyway. I kept it straight, though, under Mr. Neville’s steady gaze. “My dad got beat nearly to death and dumped in the trunk of my car. One thing led to another, and I wound up on the griddle between Sheriff Hauptmann and Doc Milliken. It was Hauptmann that told me there was fake Army captain around these parts, a Nazi pretending to be a CID man who’d actually been murdered in Kansas City.”

“So...” said Mr. Bellamy. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. This thing you can’t discuss is in my barn, which Floyd has kept me out of for days. There are Nazis and Army officers looking for it, looking for you, and probably looking for Floyd. And you tried to kill one of them with Doc Milliken’s Cadillac. Did I miss anything?”

“My dad is missing,” I said miserably. Maybe this gang had the contacts to find him. “And I’ve been associated with an awful lot of property damage lately.”

“Son,” observed Mr. Neville. “You are in big trouble.”

“Hey, Floyd’s the one who stole it!”

Floyd smiled again, the full force of his charm like a glare. Everything was a joke to my buddy. “But you’re the one they know about.”

I toyed with the computational rocket’s radio handset in the pocket of my borrowed robe. Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville were in the kitchen, talking in whispers. Floyd hadn’t said anything since they left. He just sat there and smiled at me, like everything was going his way and in just a minute he’d get up and make the winning pass.

After a while I began to see he was nervous underneath the bluff and bluster. But Floyd had never been one to show weak in front of his old man.

I wondered what I should do next. Obviously, Floyd’s plan was to sit tight and let the bad guys come to us. The problem with that plan was that I was unclear on exactly who the bad guys were. The computational rocket was nervous, or at least what passed for nervous in a machine. As for me, at this point, I suspected everyone from Mrs. Sigurdsen the librarian to Sheriff Hauptmann, not to mention Mr. Bellamy and his ‘gang.’ The only person I was sure of was Floyd, and one of the things I was most sure of about him was that he was unreliable at his best.

“Hey, fellas!” It was Random Garrett, yelling from upstairs. “There’s a police car driving on to the property.”

Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville ran in from the kitchen. Mr. Bellamy had his pump-action shotgun, while Mr. Neville had drawn his pistol, an enormous hog leg.

“Who is it?” called Mr. Bellamy.

“Looks like Augusta police.”

Augusta police wouldn’t have any business out here. Closest town was Haverhill, and they relied on the Butler County Sheriff’s Department. On the other hand, I was a lot more worried about Sheriff Hauptmann than I was about any of the Augusta cops.

Mr. Bellamy set his shotgun on the table, but not out of sight. That was interesting, too. “It’s all right,” he told Mr. Neville. “That’d be Ollie Wannamaker, or maybe Chief Davis. Put the pistol away, Marvin, nobody’s going to draw down on you.”

“What if it was a Sheriff’s car?” I asked.

“Then we’d be concerned. Hauptmann is no friend of yours, Vereen.”

Well, he had that right. I walked into the cluttered living room and looked out the front window. At least I felt better on my feet. It was almost dark now. I wondered how, or if, I was going to get to work tomorrow. I could always call in sick, if the Bellamys had a telephone.

Which they didn’t.

I watched the black-and-white Augusta police car park next to the old Ford with the blown-out window, courtesy of my little adventure today. The cruiser was a 1941 Chevrolet Deluxe that had been stretched through the war years like everything else.

Ollie Wannamaker got out slowly and looked up at the roof of Mr. Bellamy’s house, somewhere above my head. I guessed he was looking at Mr. Garrett.

“I don’t got no weapons!” Ollie yelled, holding out both hands to show they were empty. He didn’t have his holster on.

Mr. Bellamy walked past me, out on to the porch. “Why don’t you come in and have some coffee, Ollie?”

Ollie walked slowly up to the porch and climbed the stairs. He followed Mr. Bellamy back into the house, then stopped to look me over. “I kind of thought you’d be here, Vernon.” Ollie seemed sad.

We walked into the dining room. The shotgun was still on the table, Mr. Neville sitting near it with his mouth set in a narrow line. Mr. Bellamy picked up the weapon and laid it in his lap as he sat down.

I didn’t understand the power here. Ollie didn’t have any jurisdiction out of town, but a cop was a cop. Mr. Bellamy was threatening him in a way that Ollie didn’t have to notice, officially speaking — something it never would have occurred to me to do. Mr. Bellamy waved Ollie and me to sit down before turning to his son. “Why don’t you go get us some coffee, Floyd?”

All the guns were making me nervous, and I wasn’t the one on the receiving end of their attention. I had to give Ollie credit for what he said next. “Don’t think you need to be armed here inside your own home, Mr. Bellamy.”

“Been a lot of shooting in Butler County lately, Officer Wannamaker.”

“I see,” said Ollie.

There was an uncomfortable silence. After a long minute, I spoke up. “What brings you out here?”

“I was thinking you might be here, Vernon. We need to talk.”

Once again, it was about me. I glanced around the table. None of the men with guns were going to let me talk to Ollie alone, I could see that.

“What’s up?” I asked, wishing that Ollie could whisper secretly in my ear just like the computational rocket did.

Chapter Ten

F
loyd came in from the kitchen
with a tray of coffee in mismatched cups from two different sets of china, plus an odd one. He’d forgotten the cream and sugar. Mrs. Bellamy would be fluttering if she were here right now.

Ollie took a sip, then stared around the table. He showed a little more backbone than I would have expected from the kid I knew back in high school, locking eyes with Mr. Neville and Mr. Bellamy in turn before returning his gaze to me. He ignored Floyd.

“The Army’s got Military Police all over Augusta right now. They flew in about an hour ago on a C-47 from Fort Leavenworth. Landed behind the fence at the refinery and set up a perimeter. There’s a Colonel Pinkhoffer putting Chief Davis on the hot seat, asking questions about who would have been driving a blue Cadillac convertible out east of town this afternoon. Everybody’s either hopping mad or scared spitless, and Bertha’s making a huge nuisance of herself down at City Hall trying to break this open for the papers. Not just ours. Chicago, Kansas City. It’s big news. Word is the Army’s raising the same kind of Cain in El Dorado, too.”

Mr. Bellamy glared like a stone toad. “Yeah?”

I didn’t say anything, just stared down at the tablecloth to avoid Ollie’s hard look. I don’t lie well, even when I have nothing to say. And this was not the dumpy, goofy kid I’d known in high school. Nobody was who they used to be any more, except maybe Floyd. Was that the war, or just growing up? I couldn’t tell.

“Well,” said Ollie to fill the silence. He scratched his head and looked unhappy. “Here’s the thing. Just a few minutes before Colonel Pinkhoffer showed up with a couple of squads of M.P.s, one of Reverend Miller’s farmhands came by the station. The Reverend sent me a message asking if Vernon here was okay.”

“I guess I am,” I said. That was the biggest whopper I’d ever told. Adding up the last few days, with Pinkhoffer on top for garnish, I’d never been in this much trouble in my life. I’d never
heard
of this much trouble in my life. I felt a terrible sinking feeling, like going deep into quicksand with no rope.

“That’s not the way I heard it.” Ollie put his cup down, spread his hands on the tablecloth. Mrs. Bellamy’s second-best linen, I noticed, which already had gun oil and coffee stains on it. I wouldn’t want to be Floyd or Mr. Bellamy when she got home. “Reverend Miller didn’t say much in his note, but Junius, the farm hand, was happy to share a little bit of gossip. He says Reverend Miller found you out here near the Bellamy place sitting on the front of Doc Milliken’s blue Cadillac convertible. The Reverend was concerned that you looked really scared, and you’d maybe been roughed up some.”

He glanced at Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Neville for a moment before continuing. “The car looked worse, Junius said. That’s why Reverend Miller wondered what happened to you, and if there was anything he could do to help. His note said he left you with Alonzo and Floyd Bellamy, so I came out here.” Ollie drummed his fingers on the table, obviously considering if he wanted to tell me anything else. “I haven’t talked to Chief Davis about nothing yet, Vernon.”

“You might say I’ve had a bad time of it,” I said, smiling weakly.

Ollie looked even more unhappy. “That’s all you have to say to me? That ain’t good enough, Vernon.” He shook his head, ticking off on his fingers as he continued to talk. “A blue Cadillac convertible was used in an attack on an Army CID officer somewhere out this side of town. The officer’s orderly fired his weapon at the car. Reverend Miller says the windshield of Doc Milliken’s car looked shot out. And Doc Milliken says he doesn’t know where his car is — that you took it without permission.”

He picked up his coffee and slurped at it, collecting his thoughts. “That’s theft, Vernon. Felonious assault. Probably half a dozen other charges I can’t think of right now. But somebody will. Look, I’m not saying it was you and I’m not saying it wasn’t, but there’s only one blue Cadillac convertible in Augusta.”

The walls were closing in on me, but I had to try. That Ollie had come out here, on his own apparently, to speak to me unofficially, meant I had a chance of persuading him.

“Ollie...” How to make him believe me? The truth had become so complicated that I didn’t understand it myself any more. “Doc Milliken gave the car to me, told me to keep it for the weekend, right after you and Deputy Truefield left his house last night. I needed it because you had impounded my Hudson for evidence.”

Ollie shook his head. “Sheriff Hauptmann took your Hudson right before dark. He had me sign it over to him, said he was going to return it to you.”

Before dark? That was before he showed up at Doc Milliken’s house. How could Hauptmann have even known about the Hudson being impounded unless he was involved in the attack on Dad? Ollie might have called him before coming after me, but I doubted it.

Not if he thought Dad’s life was in danger. Which it had been.

The evidence was hardly airtight, but I was beginning to have a pretty good idea why Dad disappeared on the way to Wichita. I’d bet good money that Truefield never even left town with Dad. Either Dad was dead, or they’d hidden him somewhere in Butler County under Hauptmann’s jurisdiction. Butler County was the biggest county in Kansas, so that covered a lot of ground.

“Vernon,” Ollie said. “Are you going to say anything in your defense? Please give me something I can use. Something I can check out on my own and show to Chief Davis.”

Mr. Bellamy shook his head at me, but I thought I could trust Ollie. He seemed so square, so willing to help. And I’d known him for years — not as long as the Bellamys, but Ollie was a lot more on the level than they were right now. Mr. Neville’s angry glare told me all I needed to know about how level the Bellamys were. Or maybe had ever been.

“I ran over Captain Markowicz in Doc Milliken’s Cadillac. I thought he was—” I stopped as Mr. Neville coughed, while Mr. Bellamy tried to glare me into silence. What did Ollie know about the Nazis?