Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 02 - River Mourn (24 page)

After sleeping most
of the
day, Rosswell awoke, thinking he’d have time to hustle down to
Mabel’s before supper.

Mrs. Bolzoni didn’t look up from sweeping the front
porch. “I make the special tonight for the supper.”

Rosswell jerked to a halt before he reached the steps, forming
a question, knowing that the answer would be delicious. “What’s the special?” The
delightful smells of the supper wafted from the kitchen onto the porch. “Tell
me. I need to know.” Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, he’d begun salivating.

Alessandra stepped around her mother. “Roasted bone marrow on crostini,
sea salt sprinkled over it, mixed green salad with Italian herb vinaigrette,
New York strip steak, sides of grilled Portobello mushrooms and baked new potatoes,
all accompanied by a nice cabernet sauvignon—sweet tea for you and me—and
Ricotta cheesecake for dessert.”

Rosswell mulled over falling to the ground and weeping. Instead, he
swallowed a few times to lower the saliva content of his mouth. “I have urgent
business that I must attend to in town.”

“
Poverino
, you die nearly in the fire and I make special for
you, but you go to be with frogs.”

“Momma.” Alessandra put her finger to her lips. “He’s had a rough time.”

“I lose two good guests and the judge not will eat my food. Throw it to
the pigs.” Mrs. Bolzoni sniffed and clumped back into the house. “Frogs bring
nothing but trouble,” she threw over her shoulder before the door slammed.

Lost two guests? The Four Bee had somehow morphed into The Hotel
California? You can check in any time you like, but you can never check out?
No. Wait. That’s not what the song said. But if two guests had gone, then that
meant Rosswell could double up on his portions. Haste clouds judgment.

Alessandra interrupted Rosswell’s thoughts. “You’ll have to forgive her.
There’s been a lot of strange things going on around here lately.”

“Your mother’s a saint on earth. I need to eat her supper. It would be
rude of me not to.”

“We need to talk, you and I.”

“I’ll be glad to talk to you, Alessandra.”

“It’s important.”

“First, tell me which guests left.”

“Philbert and Theodore.”

“I’ll try to help your mother by making sure the leftovers are minimal.”

“Thank you, Judge. And then a talk?”

“Tomorrow. I promise.”

After supper, Rosswell fired up the truck’s replacement, a 1999
metallic bronze Kia Sephia with the driver’s door spray-painted white. He
dubbed the asthmatic four-banger
Sofia.
Gas mileage ran close to ten
miles to the gallon and Rosswell wasn’t certain that the pistons fired in
sequence. The sun, although not yet setting, shined clear and bright, allowing him
to drive in a strong light. He needed the strong light to see through his tears
at the thought of giving a thousand dollars to the husband of one of his clerks
for the piece of junk he was driving. There wasn’t time to go car shopping. Rosswell
needed a ride in a hurry and the Kia Sephia was the only thing available on the
spur of the moment. Plus the tags had been expired
only
a month. Rosswell prayed that all
the state troopers were somewhere else today. Tomorrow, he’d make the car
legal.

“Judge, I’ve got a question.” Ollie settled in the corner
booth in the back of the restaurant, the one badly lit by buzzing fluorescent
ceiling lights. “Who started that fire? And where is Jill?”

“That’s two questions.”

Mabel trotted up. “I need your order. The place is filling up.”

Rosswell didn’t hesitate. “The biggest steak you’ve got.” It was a good
time to make up for all the meals he’d missed recently. “Rare. With blood
running from it. And a huge baked potato. Make that two potatoes. Lots of
butter. Real butter.”

“Drink?”

“Water. I’m on a diet. Oh. And coffee. Make it to go.”

“Ollie?”

“Don’t call me Ollie. I’m your father!”

“I know.” She waited, pencil poised.

“Cheese sandwich and a Coke.”

Mabel scurried away.

Ollie said, “Kids have no respect these days.”

“It’s an epidemic.”

“You’ll blossom soon from two things. The food. And the hot air inside
you. Tell me where Jill is.”

“The short answer I’m sure of first. I don’t know where Jill is.”

“And the long answer of who started the fire you’re not sure about?”

“I’ll tell you what started that fire. A big front from the Gulf of
Mexico brought in lots of humidity and wind.” Rosswell drew a meteorological
picture (a large arrow pointing north) on the paper placemat to demonstrate. “Then
a dry front from Canada increased the wind and lowered the humidity.” A large
arrow going south. “Add in a drought.” Squiggles, indicating evaporation. “A
couple of sparks or lightning.” Zig-zag lines. “I know it’s complicated, but that’s
a recipe for a perfect firestorm.” Rosswell admired his own handiwork.

Ollie drummed his fingers on the table. “Nathaniel Dahlbert started that
fire and you know it.”

“Did you smell gasoline or any other accelerant? I mean before the cars started
crashing into each other.”

“Uh…no.” Ollie stopped drumming and bent to inspecting his fingernails. “Doesn’t
prove anything. It’s a wonder we survived.”

Mabel arrived, bearing a plate with the largest sirloin steak Rosswell
had ever seen, plus a water and a huge coffee. The sides, two gigantic baked
potatoes, rested on a separate plate, both drowning in butter. “Hope that holds
you until your bedtime snack.”

“That is my bedtime snack. I need it to go.”

“You know where the go boxes are.”

Ollie’s sandwich and soda were, in Rosswell’s estimation, puny compared
to his bedtime snack.

Ollie snatched up Rosswell’s ticket Mabel had laid on the table. “Hope
you charged him enough. That looks like a week’s worth of meat for an ordinary
person.”

Mabel said, “If the judge starts getting too expensive, he can work it
off on weekends,” then disappeared.

Rosswell fetched a go box from the pantry and began arranging his food. “A
wildfire is an inefficient way to kill someone. We’re living proof.” Enough
salt and pepper landed on the steak to preserve it for an eon. “We survived
because we found a break in the fire and skedaddled.”

“What’s the matter with you? Nathaniel is trying to kill us.”

“He’s had lots of chances to knock us off but didn’t take them.” Tucking
the tabs of the box securely gave Rosswell a chance to think. “Back to the same
question I had earlier. Why are we still alive?”

“He’s not had a good enough chance to kill us yet, or we would be dead.”

“What about the cave? Are you not seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Judge, with the stress we’ve been under, we could’ve seen Peter Rabbit
hopping down the bunny trail.”

Rosswell sipped from the syrupy coffee he’d prepared with a glutton’s
share of sugar and a dash of salt. “Maybe we can agree on this.” Delicious. He slurped
down the last of the coffee and signaled Mabel for a refill. “I’m not saying
that Nathaniel isn’t trying to kill us. I can’t figure out why he hasn’t killed
us yet. Are we serving some kind of purpose for him?”

“We’re providing an immense amount of irritating entertainment for him.”

“I learned something in the military. An officer in the
field who’s spying on his opponent looks for five things: shape, shadow, color,
movement, and sound.”

“We’re not in a war.”

“Yes, we are. Let’s think about this situation with
Nathaniel as if we were scoping him out in the field. First, shape. He’s got a
business that looks legitimate yet he’s hiding something. Shadows are next. If
you’re skulking around, you don’t want the enemy to see your shadow. Turk is
one of his main shadows but that guy is as stupid as a drunk possum. Color’s a
good one. Nathaniel is so white he’s an albino and his orange hair makes him
stick out like a scarecrow singing alto in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

“Color. That’s a good one. Maybe he’s blending in
somewhere and we haven’t noticed him because he’s too obvious to hide. Take me.
I can’t disguise myself. Even people who don’t know me recognize me.”

Rosswell nodded, discarding the temptation to voice an
observation that a giant rodent sporting a purple tattoo atop a bald head is
hard to miss. “Next is movement. Lots of people know about him but we can never
catch him outside of his castle, except for the time I saw him talking to Mrs.
Bolzoni.”

Ollie said, “Last one is sound. We’ve never heard a sound from Nathaniel
except when he’s up close. And he sounds like he’s got a problem with his
voice.”

“Maybe he’s sick.” Ollie started to speak, but before he could, Rosswell
shushed him. “That’s it. Nathaniel is sick. He’s dying. He knows he’s dying. He
wants us to die before he does. It’s all in the timing. We know he’s got Tina.
But where?”

“You’re right, Judge. I understand completely. Except that we don’t know
that he has Tina.”

“You’re both missing something important.” Jill, complete with coffee pot
and waitress dress stood next to their table. “But you could use some apple
pie.”

Jill’s appearance
failed to elicit
a response from either Rosswell or Ollie.

“Cat got your tongue?”

Rosswell said, “I haven’t seen a cat. Have you seen a
cat, Ollie?”

“Jill, all I know is you sure took off like a fraidy cat,
leaving us locked in a closet.”

“The closet wasn’t locked.” Jill filled Rosswell’s
coffee cup. “You guys don’t know how close you came to dying.” She slid a large
slice of apple pie in front of him, then did the same for Ollie. “I baked this
pie from apples I peeled.”

Rosswell said, “Maybe you’d like to tell us why you
exposed us to mortal danger.”

Mabel hollered from across the restaurant, “Jill,
station five.”

“I’m busy, but let me sketch it for you. My friends
came over to see me. While we were in the front yard, Turk and Nathaniel drove
by and fired a couple of rounds. We took exception to that so we gave chase.
Then the fire started. The bad guys got away. I had to make sure it was okay to
be seen in public before I showed my face. Gotta go. Customers.”

Rosswell and Ollie watched Jill take a few more orders
before Rosswell said, “That’s the biggest crock of crap I’ve heard since the gray
goose ate granny’s grackle.” He shoveled a couple of bites of pie into his
mouth, closing his eyes and chewing. “Hmmmm.”

“Goose? What goose? Why would a goose eat a grackle?”

“It’s an old saying in my family. My grandma said it
all the time.”

Ollie said, “I wonder who these friends are that Jill
is so proud of?”

“I think she has imaginary friends.” Rosswell patted
his mouth with the napkin. “But I’ll ask her.”

Jill glided by their table. “I get off in two hours. We’ll
talk.”

In what passed for Mabel’s office, yet another conference on
the situation took place after Jill ended her shift. The single light bulb
hanging from a wire nailed to the ceiling had blown out. With a lot of
complaining and groaning, Ollie climbed up on a rickety stepladder and screwed
in a fresh bulb. It was a new-fangled “green energy” contraption that took
fifteen minutes to warm up to the point where it could shed a milky
luminescence, fainter than most stars.

Rosswell seated himself in a wobbly wooden chair behind
a tiny desk strewn with papers. “Who are these friends of yours that you’re so
proud of?” The dust in the air made him sneeze.

Jill looked around, apparently searching for a chair. “I
don’t know.” She found a plastic soda carton, upended it, and sat.

Ollie stood the whole time. “You hang around with
strange men? You’ll get in trouble if you hang around with strange men. Present
company excluded.”

She wiggled around on the carton. “I think they were
undercover agents or spies or something.”

Spies? Undercover agents? In Sainte Genevieve? Rosswell
perked up. This could be interesting. Or maybe cause Gustave to carry Jill to
the mental health center. She sounded paranoid enough to keep Ollie silent.

“And,” Rosswell said, “what were they spying on?”

“Not spies. They were law enforcement of some kind. CIA.
FBI. IRS. Homeland Security. TSA. USDA. FDIC.”

“Lots of federal cops running around these days. It’s
hard to tell who’s chasing who.”

The gaffe roused Ollie from his silence. “Whom.”

Rosswell bit his tongue, then loosened his teeth when
it began to hurt. “Tell us about the cops from the unknown agency.”

“They wouldn’t tell me their last names, only their
first names. One was tall with square shoulders and eyes popping out like he
had a thyroid problem. The other one was shorter. His hair was cut down to
practically nothing and he wore a jewel stuck in his earlobe.”

“A diamond earring. Philbert is his name. The tall one
is Theodore.”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

Rosswell briefly explained how he’d met up with
Theodore and Philbert one week ago, the day he’d seen the body tossed into the
river. He didn’t tell Jill a lot of the details, including the Farmington
conversation with Philbert. He still didn’t trust her. “Where did you meet
these two?”

“Right here. This restaurant.”

“Convenient. Let’s go see those two gentlemen.” Maybe
they’d moved to different lodgings in Farmington.

Jill shook her head. “They left. Something about
bigger fish to fry.”

Ollie angled toward Jill. “You’ve been hoodwinked.
Those two were a couple of con artists. They sniffed around for awhile and
couldn’t find any money to steal so they left town.”

Jill puckered her lips into a pout. “You don’t know
that.”

Rosswell thought that it was not beyond belief that
con artists could become auditors for the federal government. It had happened
before. He made a mental note to discuss with Ollie in private the huge number
of con artists working for the government.

Jill continued her defense of Theodore and Philbert. “They
saved my life.”

Rosswell deposited a load of full attention on Ollie. “Why
do you think they’re con men? Why couldn’t they be the secret police?”

“We don’t have secret police in this country.”

“You’re kidding, right? Answer the question.”

“Rosswell, you’re acting awfully judgmental.” Ollie took
his turn to pout. “Let’s see. If they were cops, they would’ve busted Nathaniel’s
baby selling ring. That’s illegal, you know. That’s pretty big fish to fry. The
headlines would look great. If they were really cops. I think we need to
contact the state cops. Gustave’s so crooked they’ll have to screw him into the
ground when he dies.”

“I’d imagine that the state fire marshal will
investigate the fire.”
A
good reason to bring Jim Bill on board. I’ll make some calls.
Rosswell
needed to ask Jill more questions. “Did you see Nathaniel shooting at you?”

“No.” She reached into her purse for a lipstick. “I
heard gunshots and Theodore said that he and Philbert both had seen Nathaniel
shooting at me.” She applied the lipstick without consulting a mirror. Rosswell
admired women who could do that. Without help from his car’s rear-view mirror,
he had trouble finding his face when applying lip balm, and usually wound up
with a healthy smear on his chin.

“I hate to be the one to defend that rusty-haired
son-of-a-bitch, but he was nowhere around.” Ollie leaned even closer toward
Jill. “Theodore and Philbert wanted you to trust them. What better way than to
create a fake threat on your life and then rescue you from it?”

Jill backed away from Ollie. “It wasn’t fake.”

“Another thing I need to know is who was helping Karyn
deliver the baby I saw from the passageway. You were going to tell me before
Theodore and Philbert arrived.”

“Susannah Acorn.”

“Gustave’s daughter?” Ollie’s eyes grew wide. “Frankie
Joe’s wife?”

Rosswell said, “I suspected Frankie Joe and Susannah
were in on this. Frankie Joe’s story about what happened on the ferry was too
cut and dried. Gustave gave him a script to read which was supposed to divert
attention away from him, his daughter, and son-in-law. Didn’t work.”

“I told you my sister was the bad girl here. Karyn
wants to keep helping Nathaniel because she’s making good money. Gustave is a
rotten bastard. He and Nathaniel are in this up to their breathers. I want to
see those two in jail.”

“Jill.” Rosswell stood and grasped her hand. “Listen
to me. There’s only one thing I care about right now. You must tell me the
truth. Where is Nathaniel hiding Tina?”

Jill’s weeping made him fear the worst, that Tina was
dead.

Ollie said, “This is not the time for tears, sister.”

She rubbed her cheeks with the heels of her palms. “Damn
it, Ollie, I’m not your sister.”

Rosswell steeled himself. “Answer the question. Where
is Nathaniel hiding Tina?”

“She’s not in Sainte Gen. She’s not even in the United
States. She’s in Brazil.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“She’s a prisoner on a baby farm.”