Dead Man Falls (16 page)

Fritz might be a good man, but you couldn’t change the fact that he had rather un-admirably sired Leroy and Larry. I peeked around Mother to get a look at the senior Harper. I was expecting an older version of Leroy, and what I saw surprised me.

Fritz was about six feet tall with sandy-blond hair smoothed neatly back from his face. Standing there straight as a pole in his deputy uniform, he looked quite distinguished. Not fleshy like Leroy, but not spindly either, Fritz looked in very good shape for a man his age, which I guessed to be about sixty-five.

And my mother was having a hissy fit. My, my, but her vehemence about having a handsome--and significantly younger--man at the door was a bit of a curiosity.

"Now, Lucille," Fritz called through the glass. "If we could just have a private moment, I can clear up that little misunderstanding we had a while back."

"Well," Lucille said, her voice soft as melting butter. "I just don’t see how that’s at all possible, Fritz Harper, since you’re not setting foot in my house under any circumstances."

Jerry looked over his shoulder at me. It was a helpless pleading look.

"Hey," I said, backing up and out of the way. "I didn’t make the staff assignments. And furthermore, I’m not in charge of my mother. Arrest her if you need to. That’s about all that seems to work."

"Miz Jackson," Jerry said, trying to gently pry her away from the door. "I’m afraid I don’t have much choice but to have Deputy Harper here. If you’ll step back and allow him to come inside, I think we can clear up any problems you might have. I’ll personally vouch for Mr. Harper’s integrity. He’s just here to do his job."

Lucille tipped her head slightly and stepped back as commanded. Unfortunately, it was only so she could grab the heavy wooden door and slam it in Fritz’s face. "I don’t believe that’s possible, Sheriff." She turned and casually walked into the kitchen and began clearing the table.

Jerry sighed heavily, gave me a look that implied I should do something about my mother, then reopened the door and walked outside to talk to his deputy.

I obligingly took myself to the kitchen and began the interrogation. "Okay, Mother, what’s the deal?"

Fire was fairly shooting from her eyes and she was still huffing like an enraged dragon. "That Fritz Harper is just an ass, that’s what the deal is."

Well, it was a start, but not very enlightening. "What exactly did he do?"

"I just don’t think I can speak about it," she said, viciously stuffing the chicken basket wrappers into the trash can. She huffed and gnashed her teeth for a few seconds, then said, "If you must know, it was about a year ago. That Fritz Harper walked right up to me in the Dairy Queen and told me my time of grieving for your father was up and he would be taking me out on a date the following Saturday night." She took a ragged breath. "Can you imagine? The nerve of that man to step right up in front of all my friends and say such a thing!"

Actually, I could and it sounded kind of romantic. Besides, best I could tell Fritz Harper appeared to meet all of Lucille’s essential criteria; meaning he was alive, didn’t use a walker, was nice-looking and was self-supporting besides. The only negative--and one can’t deny it was a big one--was that his last name was Harper. Even so, it seemed the deck was stacked in his favor and she should have jumped at the chance to have him guard her, available and able men being in short supply these days.

"So, you didn’t want to go out with him?"

Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at me for a few seconds then snapped her jaw shut. "Of all people, Jolene, I would have thought you’d understand." She spun around and headed for her bedroom.

Damn. Why can’t I get these things right? I thought about the situation for a few minutes, decided I really did understand and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. I knew she heard me anyway. "If he hadn’t embarrassed you, would you have gone out with him?"

Thump. Bang. Ching
.

It sounded suspiciously like various items were being thrown against the wall. Tsk, tsk. "Is that a yes?"

The door swung open and Lucille gave me a really mean look like this was all my fault. Wasn’t it always?

"He’s not like his boys, Jolene. They took after their mother, and it’s a pity. Fritz is a decent man, but he surely doesn’t know a single solitary thing about asking a lady out. If I’d have started going out with him then, well, just imagine what everybody would have said. Him snapping his fingers and me trotting after him like some fool dog." She huffed again for emphasis. "I don’t care how good-looking he is, I’ll not have anybody thinking I’m a pushover."

As if that were a concern. So, now that I knew what the problem was, all I had to do was give her a graceful way of letting Deputy Fritz stick around and redeem himself. I could do that. "The thing is, Mother..." I tried to look very understanding. "I’m not sure that we have too many choices right now. If those Redwater detectives say I have to go to the hotel, well, gosh, I guess I do."

"Oh, save it, Jolene." She snatched up a pillow and a clothes hanger from the floor. "This is just something Jerry Don worked out so you two could go spend some time together without everybody talking about it, not that folks won’t still talk."

My shoulders stiffened and my chin might have jutted out just a little. "If I want to spend the night with Jerry I don’t need to work out anything with anybody but Jerry, and I for darn sure don’t need the Redwater Police Department supervising the event."

She started to sputter, clamped her lips, huffed a little then said,

"Well, I still don’t think it’s right that you get to run off with Jerry and leave me out here alone with that hard-headed assuming jackass."

Not right? Oh, please. She was practically drooling over the idea. "I don’t see that you have a choice. But if you really want, I can go see if Max can--"

"No," she snapped. "Max needs to get home to his wife." She shook her head and tsk-tsked. "I suppose Fritz can stay. But you go out there and make it real clear that I’m only tolerating him as a favor to you."

"Right, a favor to me, got it. If it weren’t for your deep devotion to your daughter’s well-being and extreme concern for her safety you’d--"

"Don’t overdo it, Jolene," she snapped. "Just get out there and get it over with."

"Fine, I will, but don’t be thinking just because you’ve got Fritz Harper right where you want him that I am in the same situation. Regardless of what you might think, this little outing isn’t going to be fun and games for me." Nothing here ever is.

I found Jerry and Mr. Harper standing in the middle of the living room discussing something, but they both clammed up instantly when I walked in. "Mr. Harper, as you know, there are certainly things to be worked out between you and my mother. She agreed to have you stay here, but only as a favor to me. If my safety weren’t involved, well..." Yeah, it was getting a little deep even for me. "You get the idea."

Fritz chuckled a little and grinned. "Me and Lucille will work things out, don’t you worry. No offense, Miz Jackson, but your mother flies off the handle a little too easy sometimes."

"Fritz Harper, how dare you!" Lucille said, stomping into the room. "Like I told Jolene..."

She continued on telling him this, that and the other thing, so Jerry and I slipped back into the kitchen.

"Let’s get going while we still have the chance," Jerry said.

I wasn’t that anxious to spend the evening on police work, but at the moment it seemed far more appealing than watching Lucille and Fritz play cat and mouse. With a quick nod of agreement, I zipped into the bedroom, grabbed my duffel bag, made a quick sashay into the bathroom for the essential toiletries and was out of the house in a minute flat. Jerry had the car running when I got there. Neither of us said a word as Jerry drove away from Mother’s house and onto the Redwater Falls highway.

Sitting still for a few minutes in the car made me realize how tired I actually was. I'd been slapped in the face by the past twice at the grocery store, found a bullet in my tire, battled for and then endured a birthday party at the DQ and that was just getting started. To say the least, it made for a long and weary day. "Do I really have to talk to Rick and company tonight?"

Jerry reached down beside the console, pulled out a yellow yearbook and tossed it in my lap. "Not if you come up with something good to keep him busy until morning."

"Sorry, Jerry, but I’m not looking at this in the car. Besides the fact that I just don’t want to, I’ll throw up. Literally."

"Oh, yeah. Motion sickness."

"Yet another of my childhood problems I haven’t outgrown."

He laughed. "Why do I get the feeling I’m on that list as well."

"Number one slot."

"I think that’s okay, Jolene. Really I do."

I liked the way that sounded, but I knew better than to dwell on any amorous possibilities. We had business to attend to first. "How about the photography club thing, did Rick check on that?"

"Nothing in Calvin’s bank account suggests blackmail payments, particularly twenty-five years of them, but he’s trying to find out if Calvin kept up the hobby or sold his photos in art shows. May take awhile."

"And might not mean anything anyway."

Jerry nodded. "It's possible that one of Calvin's photos from high school turned out to have something incriminating in it for someone, so he keeps it."

"Now, twenty-five years later, something happens that makes him decide to use the photo."

"He tries, but it gets him killed instead."

"That makes some sense," I said. "The people circled might or might not have known about Calvin’s photo, but we would all know what it meant if we saw it."

Jerry tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. "Although, if the killer has the photo, assuming there is one, why kill the rest of us?"

This scenario was working itself into a corner; I could feel it. "Maybe he doesn’t own it anymore or maybe he thinks there might be another copy?"

"Too many maybes," Jerry said. "But I think we’re on the right track. We’ll sit down at the hotel and brainstorm everything we can think of."

"Good idea," I mumbled, already starting on my own brainstorming. Somewhere along the way dusk turned to dark and the dashboard’s clock flashed nine forty-three. Was it really that late? "Jerry, is the falls open now?"

"Should be. I think they keep the lights on out there until eleven."

"Do the police still have the placed roped off?"

He glanced in my direction and frowned. "I don’t make the decisions about these things, Jolene, and frankly, neither does Rick."

Huh? My question was both simple and benign, so Mr. Sheriff’s defensive posturing meant something was awry. "Okay, but what I really wanted to know is the place still crisscrossed with yellow police tape and will they let us in?"

"The park is open," he said, kind of tersely. "There are no officers on duty. The mayor wants to keep everything looking as normal as possible. The falls is important to the city."

Ah, now I got the picture. And it was not a pretty picture--one Jerry wasn’t happy with and neither was Rick. Didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it made what I had in mind a whole lot easier. "Well, Jerry, then let’s go see the falls," I said, a little cheery lilt in my voice. "I bet those lights really make the rocks and water look great at night."

He gave me a look that could have meant a number of things, but general wariness was the main substance. "What do you have in mind?"

"Nothing specific," I admitted. "But I really would like to see the place when it isn’t full of people. I think I remember where everyone I met was, but I have a few questions about it. I don’t know that it matters, but from his truck, could Red White have seen the falls ceremony or the area where the body was stashed? Where was Russell in relation to Red? Russell and Mother both said they saw old classmates and teachers at the ceremony. Who all was there and where were they standing?"

"You’ve definitely been busy thinking about this." He smiled. "And here I thought you were hanging on my every word all afternoon." "Well, yeah, that too."

"Your questions are good ones, Jo, but even if you get all the answers, what do you expect them to tell you?"

"I guess I don’t know, exactly."

"Then I’ll help you out," Jerry said. "What you’re doing is trying to find a killer from where they were standing, figuring he or she would want the best vantage point to see the body come over."

Yes. I’d thought about the killer watching us after Calvin was pulled from the river--and that still seemed likely--but Jerry was right too, he’d have wanted to see the whole thing. A chill tickled up my back. And who had the best standing spots in the house? Me, my mother, and Harley Junior. "Harley."

Jerry tipped his head. "The motorcycle?"

"The Davenport. Rhonda’s son."

"Rhonda has a son?"

Oh, yeah. Big hairy dude built like a refrigerator, not that I was going to say that right off. I had enough explaining to do. Apparently Deputy Max hadn’t confessed many details about the grocery store incident--and I knew I sure hadn’t--so, now, it was time to fess up.

After the requisite personal statistics on Rhonda--I did not call her a water buffalo or a slut even once--I gave him the basics on the Harleys. I also came clean about my little visit with Harley Junior at the falls on Saturday, his disintegrating ice cream and his rescue by Harley Senior. After some serious glaring and verbal prodding, he even got the full version of the unpleasant affair at the grocery store. I tried to downplay how hulking Harley had become slightly enraged upon learning my name, but you can’t get much past Jerry. Sheriff Parker seemed to think Harley’s behavior made him suspect. In my book, being Rhonda’s son made him suspect, but I wisely didn’t say so.

When we finally pulled into the roadside park at the falls, Jerry Don Parker was not especially happy with me. He’d quit chewing me out about five minutes before we arrived, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t still thinking about it. "I ought to call Rick and have you tell him why you kept this business with Harley Davenport a secret", he said, driving slowly through the dark lot. "And after that, you can call Max’s wife and explain how you helped him get fired."