Breaking Point (7 page)

             
"Good. I was looking for Matt Barr. Is that you?"

             
"No, Matt's off today, but he'll be back next week. Let me check, though." Turning to a calendar on the wall behind him, he pushed a thick finger across the numbers and came to rest on Monday the twenty second.

             
"Here. Yeah, he'll be back in here Monday at nine o'clock. Is there something I can help you with? I'm George." He extended a huge hand.

             
George seemed in step with the rest of the Iowans I'd met so far. The folks here were about as friendly a bunch as ever crossed the prairie.

             
I handed him one of my new business cards. "Did you know Charlie Wilson? He was the salesman for Regis Optics?"

             
"Sure. Just to say hello to, though. Matt's the owner and he did all the buying." George looked at the card for a moment, scratching his head before he went on. "I think Matt did some pictures for him awhile back, so we might have his address on file if that helps."

             
I knew his address but the news about the pictures piqued my interest.

             
"Sure," I said. "That'd be good."

             
George excused himself and went through a door at the rear of the right-hand wall. The door had a reversible sign on it. It was currently turned to read "OK." I went over and peeked at the other side. "Darkroom, Keep Out" was printed on it.

             
When George emerged a few minutes later, he was frowning.

             
"That's really odd." he said. "There isn't a negative in the file with Charlie's name on it and we always keep the negative." Back at the counter, he opened a long file drawer behind him and went through the alphabetical cards. “I don't think I'll find anything in here."

             
"No. There's no receipt either. That's not so strange, though. Matt probably didn't charge him for it. But I don't know why there's no negative."

             
"Do you know what the job was that Barr did for Charlie?"

             
"I think he made a negative from a photo that Charlie had. We have a little darkroom where we do some black-and-white work from time to time. Then we put the negative in a glassine envelope and write the person's name and address or at least the phone number on it."

             
"Would it have been a color photo, do you know, or a black-and-white?"

             
"We only make black-and-white prints here, but we can do it from either a color or a black-and-white photo. I remember though, that Charlie brought in a glossy black-and-white picture, an eight-by-ten.

             
Well," I ventured, "If Matt made the negative, he'd have given it to Charlie, right? So there wouldn't be one here."

             
"No, there'd still be some here. He takes a couple of shots of the picture and then develops them and prints from the best negative. But all the negatives, maybe three of them, would be filed here in case the customer wants more copies later."

             
"But if Charlie wanted all the copies, would Matt have given them to him?"

             
"We usually don't, but for Charlie, maybe he did. You'll have to ask Matt next week. What exactly are you looking for anyway?"

             
I was already halfway through the door as I answered back over my shoulder,               "You were a big help. Thanks." I waved on the way to my car.

Chapter 8

              I checked my watch and figured this might be a good time to catch Charlie Wilson's parents at home and ask them about that missing photograph. I'd set the framed picture that was taken on their porch last Christmas on top of my desk and pasted their phone number to the glass. I peeled the note free and carried it over to the living room where I could be comfortable.

             
"Hello, Mrs. Wilson?" I inquired when an older woman answered.

             
"Yes."

             
I identified myself and told her that her daughter-in-law had hired me to investigate Charlie's death. She seemed somewhat relieved to hear it.

             
"His father and I can't believe it's possible that Charlie could have just fallen in that water. And we certainly don't think he would take his own life," she said in a wavering voice. "I guess anything would be easier to accept than that, even if he was murdered. Is that what you think? That he was murdered?"

             
"No, no. Nothing definite yet, Mrs. Wilson. I'm just looking at all the information and we'll have to see where that leads us. Right now I'm wondering about the photograph that's missing from your home. Can you tell me something about it? Was it an eight by ten?"

             
"Well, I think it was. It was pasted in an album that Charlie was looking through it when he and Iris were here last. It would have been at Christmas. Then, after we heard about his," she paused, "his death...well...I was looking back at some of the old albums. The picture of him getting that citizenship award was missing. I'm pretty sure it was there before Charlie had the album. If Charlie or Iris didn't take it home, I don't know what else could have happened to it."

             
"Iris said there is a similar one?" I made it a question.

             
"Oh yes. The newspaper man was there and everything. It was the Kiwanis Club's award picnic and our Charlie even made a little speech. Some of the other boys from the home were in the picture, too, but our Charlie was the award winner that summer. I have the picture that was in the paper, but it's not as nice as the other one. Our neighbor, Mr. Belder, worked for the newspaper and he brought us the original photograph as a keepsake. Did you find it mixed in with Charlie's belongings?"

             
I assured her that I hadn't found the picture yet and asked if she would mail me the newspaper version so I could see it.

             
"Oh my, no. I couldn't take a chance that something would happen to that one and then what would I do? No, I'm afraid not. I just couldn't."

             
I tried to explain "faxing" to her and then to her husband, but neither would trust the process to keep their picture intact. If I ever wanted to see it, I would probably have to fly out to Everly, California.

             
A little while later, as I was eating my dinner, I remembered that I'd never returned Maxine's phone call of the night before. After washing down the last bite of Jif on white with a Coke, I got her on the first ring.

             
"Hey, Max, How are you?'

             
"Oh, Hi Rudy." She sounded less than enthusiastic. "I thought it was going to be Talmadge. He's supposed to call me back to let me know when he'll be home for dinner."

             
"What did you cook, Max?" Food had always been an excellent topic when I needed to divert my sister's attention. It worked its magic once again.

             
"Oh, I saw an eggplant parmesan recipe on the Cooking Channel, where they used hot sausage with the eggplant and I wanted to try it. I made a few changes, though, and added caramelized garlic pieces instead of green pepper. That pepper is too overpowering in a recipe like this. Do you want to come down and try some?"

             
"Oh, man, I wish I'd known about that earlier. I just ate, and the peanut butter is still on my teeth."

             
"Rudy! You are impossible. Why would you eat that junk when you know you're always welcome here?"

             
She was right. I'd always been as welcome in Maxine's home as I would have been in our parents', if they'd been alive. At the moment, though, I was afraid of what I might say or do to my brother-in-law if I had to sit at the same table with him.

             
"Tell you what, Max; I'll come down tomorrow if you save me a piece of that eggplant stuff. I have to run up to West Fork in the morning, so how about if I come down around one o'clock and we'll have lunch together?"

             
"Rudy, do you know something you need to tell me about Talmadge? Is that why you're coming?"

             
"No, Sis. Really. I just wanted to spend a little time with you. Now that I'm just a couple of miles away, I plan to take advantage of it and stop in for lunch as often as I can. Besides, you made me hungry for that eggplant thing. So do you want me or not?"

             
She did, indeed, want me to drop in. As a matter of fact, the idea seemed to change her mood from depressed to eager.

             
"Now, Rudy, do you remember that mission I told you about where they collect clothing and things for the underprivileged? Well, I was going to stop over there tomorrow, and I have a bunch of really heavy boxes and bags of things to donate so maybe you could carry them to the car for me and ride along while I drop them off. Then you could carry them inside for me, too."

             
I said that I had no recollection of ever discussing a mission with her. I realized, of course, that the donations had nothing to do with Maxine's own mission, which was probably to introduce me to some woman she'd decided was just perfect for her little brother. I said as much to her.

             
"Well, Rudy, you have got to realize that it's time to move on with your life and get over that Caroline Bennett. You've wasted way too much time beating on that dead horse now and maybe, just maybe, your sister really does know what's best for you." She paused for a second before her final slam-dunk. "I admit that there is a woman I'd like you to meet."

             
I groaned into the phone.

             
"Stop that, now, Rudy. This is a really nice woman and it happens that she volunteers at the mission on every other Friday, so this may or may not be the week that she's there. We'll just leave that to fate and see what happens."

             
The chances of my sister leaving this meeting to fate were about the same as my chances of being drafted by the Steelers, maybe worse. She'd probably be on the phone to this civic-minded creature from the black lagoon as soon as we hung up. The only saving grace to the entire episode was that it would keep her mind off her wandering husband for a while. I was so bad, as a result of what I knew about that louse that I agreed to accompany her to the mission after our lunch the following day.

             
"I'll just tell you one thing, though, Sis," I said sternly. "I'll meet your mystery woman...but I will not marry her."

             
We bantered a little more and ended the conversation on a pleasant note. One thing I was sure of, at lunchtime on a Friday, I wouldn't run into my brother-in-law at his home. And maybe it was time I let my sister introduce me to someone for a change. She probably had a list of potential wives for me that was a mile long and she couldn't do much worse than I had done on my own, could she?

             
I didn't have anything pressing to do, so this seemed like a good time to take a stroll down to the police station and see if Officer Felton was on duty. I'd met Bill Felton a few months earlier when I was getting all my permits and licensing papers in order. He was a young policeman and one of the first group of officers hired by the city of Oak Grove this past year. Prior to that, the County Sheriff's Department had provided law enforcement to the small town. There were only five officers in the new police department, so there was a decent chance that Bill would be manning the station this evening while one of the other four was on patrol.

             
The police department was housed in the first floor of a vacant warehouse three blocks west of me, on Pine Street. A new stoop, framed from treated lumber had been attached to the crumbling concrete beneath the front door but the peeling paint hadn't been scraped from the old window frames and the rotting wood was showing through. I forced the warped door open and stepped inside.

             
Bill was in the chair behind his desk and greeted me with a handshake and a smile.

             
"How's business? Are you picking up some clients?"

             
I nodded. "That's why I'm here. I was wondering if you were in on the case where a guy fell into the conduit over by the dam last April. Name was Wilson."

             
Bill sat back and put his feet up on the desk. "Yeah, I took the original call and got there about the same time the State Police and ambulance did. What's your interest in it?"

             
"Probably just a routine guilty wife case. She wants to make sure he didn't kill himself and asked me to check all the information. You know, just the usual regrets after the guy is gone. I read the article that she'd saved from the paper but thought it couldn't hurt to hear it firsthand."

             
"Well, we found his car parked in the lot right below the dam, where the water's released. The keys were still in it but the motor was shut off. There were a bunch of crushed out cigarette butts on the ground, both beside the car and over near the fence. Some matched the brand that we found in his car, but a few were different. Who knows how long any of them had been there? No signs of a struggle. No marks on the body that were inconsistent with a fall and being knocked around in the water all night. State boys took over from there. I heard later they'd estimated his alcohol at around point two."

             
"Suicide?"

             
"Maybe, but we can't be sure. He was drunk and depressed and maybe was just thinking about jumping and accidentally fell in. That rushing water can make some people dizzy just looking at it. His lungs were full of water, so he was definitely alive when he went in. It seemed kinder to just call it an accident, all in all."

             
"What about the letter he'd been writing to his wife?"

             
Bill folded his hands to form a steeple and pressed them flat together before flexing his fingers again to open the steeple. He continued to do these hand push-ups as he talked.

             
"There was a letter at his apartment, but she had a whole bunch of almost identical ones that he'd written and mailed to her. Those hadn't resulted in a suicide, so why would this one? Personally, I think he was just crying in his beer, trying to get her to take him back. He was drunk and feeling sorry for himself that night and probably was playing at the suicide thing. You know, looking at the water and thinking how she'd feel if he really did it, stuff like that. Then he lost his balance and fell in. That's what I think happened."

             
"You're probably right. Who found him?"

             
A couple of guys fishing around the Tailwater West Area, maybe three hundred yards or so downstream. The body was caught on some rocks and undergrowth and they saw it rolling around under the surface. I'll bet they haven't been fishing out there since."

             
"Can't blame them. What was the estimated time of death?

             
"Between ten P.M. and two in the morning," he said, "if I remember right."

             
I nodded. "By the way, you didn't find any black-and-white photos in the car did you?"

             
"No. Why?"

             
"Nothing big. His parents called the widow and are missing an old picture they think he took the last time he visited them. She doesn't have it either, so I thought maybe it was picked up as part of the crime scene. Kind of a long shot, though."

             
"Sorry, no photographs at the scene. Did you look through the stuff from his place?"

             
I said I was in the process of doing that and thanked him for his time. As I got up to leave, I couldn't resist commenting on the decrepit building he was working in.

             
"Oh, we're getting a new place next spring. Over near you, on Main. There's a couple of store fronts that are coming down and the police department and city offices are going to be built. I'll be glad to get out of this rat hole. It used to be a grain warehouse and no matter what the exterminator says, I can still hear rats the size of Pit Bulls running around upstairs at night."

             
I walked back home with the wind at my back and a mental image of thirty pound rats zooming around above Bill's head.