"The cold-case investigator gave me this," she said, holding out the report, "but it's pretty much a waste of toner. Supposedly whatever else was in Moody's file was transferred to the sheriff's department. I went down swinging there, too."
Delbert glanced up from the paper. "Why the sheriff's department?"
"Excellent question." She sat down in the swivel chair and repeated the answers she'd received, including Marlin's insistence that the transfer never happened.
"Thanks for trying, ladybug. I didn't figure on a jackpot, it being so long ago and just a missing" Delbert leapt to his feet. "Yeehaw and hallelujah." He clapped her cheeks and smacked a kiss on her lips. "I've racked my brain for days trying to figure out how to get this, and holy comoglies, you did it!"
"I did?" Hannah cocked her head, delighted to have been so helpful, but how escaped her.
"People disappear. Cars don't." He tapped the computer monitor. "Now, get this thing cracka-lackin'."
While it booted up, he said he'd called Eldredge Randal, the insurance agent named on the sticker on Chlorine's bumper, assuming Randal might have also written the policy on Royal's car.
"People didn't used to change insurance companies like yesterday's socks. A gal that poisoned her husband would be less inclined."
"Allegedly poisoned," Hannah said.
Delbert's grin had an elfin qualityadorable and devious. "Anywho, a neighbor had told me the make, model and year of Royal's car. From that, I knew the first part of its vehicle identification number had to be 1GN69. The tenth digit was D for the model year. The rest could be any letter or number, but the insurance dude wouldn't give 'em to me."
Hannah clicked the icon for the Internet provider. "Okay, you're champing to tell me how you knew
that
much."
"You would, too, if you'd read the
Secrets of the Masters of Criminal Investigation.
"
Hannah had tried. She'd curled up on the couch eager to learn a few marginally legal tricks and techniques, mostly to stay a step ahead of Sherlock Bisbee. And might have gotten past the first chapter, if it hadn't read like a James Bond novel ghostwritten by William Makepeace Thackeray.
"The 1 is for cars made in the U.S. of A.," Delbert said. "Moody's was a Chevya G for General Motors. Then there's the vehicle type code and body style."
He interrupted himself to dictate the Web site address of a subscription-only vehicle locater search engine. "Now the hitch comes in, with the codes for the engine type and series. Number 9 is a check digitcould be anything. Then 11 through 17 indicate the assembly plant and the car's production sequence. A man could spend ten years trying to guess them and still get 'em wrong."
Hannah stared at Delbert in amazement. "Wow. You're really something, you know that?"
Ever humble, he said, "Sure," then reached over her to type in his password to access the Web site's search function. Pointing at the police report, he said, "Put in Moody's VIN from the police report in that box, click on Submit and cross your fingers."
A dotted line zipped back and forth across the screena cyberspacial "Hold, please, for that information." Hannah watched it, thinking how shrewd she'd been to skip the vehicular part of the report, hoping to find a solid clue. That forest-for-the-trees thing; a Garvey ancestor might have coined it. Nearsightedness did run in the family.
A sense she'd missed something else bubbled at the back of her mind but refused to migrate to the front. Borrowing the report from Delbert, she was visually scouring it when he cuffed her shoulder, scaring the crap out of her.
"Eureka! There 'tis, ladybug. In black and by God white."
The text was royal blue and the background gray, but Hannah didn't quibble. The four columns beneath the Detailed Vehicle History header revealed the Chevy's state inspection and registration dates and locations and its mileage readings. Three months after a "Title Issued or Updated" reference was sourced Missouri Department of Vehicles, Sanity, Missouri, a subsequent update noted a new owner and registration in Ottawa, Kansas. Delbert was prancing in place. "Scroll down, scroll down."
At the bottom of the next screen, the last of three triangular FYI icons referred to a dismantled title.
Hannah looked up. "What's that mean?"
Hijacking the mouse, Delbert initiated the computer's print function. "Could be, it was totaled in a wreck. Engine, maybe the transmission, went kablooey. The new owner might've junked it instead of fixing it."
Another mouse click evicted them from the Internet.
"Hey." She slapped his hand. "I was reading that."
Whisking the printouts from the machine, he put the police report on top and picked up the cap he'd dropped on the floor. "Later, gator. I gotta copy these for tonight's meeting."
What meeting?
He paused at the door, adding, "Say, seven bells. Seven and a half, at the outside."
"But"
Delbert waved at the breakfast room. "And turn down the air a mite, will ya?"
Hannah stared after him, then glanced down at Malcolm, roused from his nap by Delbert's hoots and victory dance. The pooch loved watching the computer screen, almost as much as TV.
Moomph.
He cocked an ear.
I wanna see
couldn't have been clearer, if he'd clamped a pencil between his teeth and written Hannah a note.
"Sorry, big guy. We're both out of luck. I could bring up the Web site's home page again, but that's it. The sneaky old fart typed in the password himself, and I doubt it's 'open sesame.'"
Or even Leo's version, "the open says me."
Hannah swiveled around and grabbed the mouse. It was worth a shot, though.
* * *
What better place to hold a pity party, David thought, watching a roach stumble across the Outhouse's shag carpet. We ought to rent it out. Twenty bucks an hour. Could fetch thirty, after dark.
Josh Phelps had loaned him his desk chair, sparing David the discomfort of that plastic patio crap. The rookie investigator sat on his desk, facing Marlin's. Junior Duckworth had availed himself of Cletus Orr's swivel chair, after Marlin sent Cletus home to sleep off a sinus headache.
Kimmie Sue Beauford and Rocco Jarek had been cut loose. Marlin wanted to hold Jarek to the legal limit, essentially because he could. David demurred.
The detective's arms were winged behind his neck, his feet crossed on the desk. "Police work just doesn't get any better than this, gentlemen. Bust your ass for pretty much thirty-four hours straight building a case, then sit back and bond after it all goes to shit."
He grunted. "Present company excepted on the 'goes to shit' part."
"Don't let the mule drive the wagon," David said. "I didn't believe Kimmie Sue's alibi, either. Truth be told, it kind of pisses me off that it all checked out. That fingerprint, in particular."
"So they had dinner with Bev in Kansas City," Marlin argued. "BFD. It doesn't prove that's when Jarek left the print."
David planted a boot on the floor and crossed the other one over it. "It's not logical that he wore gloves to toss the house, adjust the thermostat, strangle Bev and open her car door, then took one off to check his hairdo in her rearview mirror."
Phelps nodded, then caught himself. Rookies don't side with the opposition when the chief is looking. It tends to lead to evidence-recovery assignments in Dumpsters and crawl spaces.
"Okay," Marlin said, "it might be a red herring. It doesn't exclude Jarek from the crime scene, though."
David allowed that it didn't. Trouble was, it didn't put him there, either.
Junior Duckworth sighed and shook his head. "Bev pawning her own jewelry to pay her bills. That's just
wrong." He fiddled with his tie tack, as if it were a one-bead rosary. "I tried to dissuade her from that huge, expensive funeral she wanted for Larry. She wouldn't listen. Said she didn't care how long she had to make payments on it, he deserved the best money could buy."
"Seems she felt the same way about that worthless daughter of hers." Marlin leaned forward and riffled a pile of bank, credit card and loan statements. "Bev was sliding toward bankrupting herself, supporting Malibu Barbieand her plastic surgeon. As far as we can tell, Kimmie Sue hasn't held down a real job since she flipped burgers during high school."
Phelps said to David, "Doesn't that contradict Ms. Beauford's statement? She told you she was here to talk her mother into selling the house and moving to an apartment." He spread his hands. "Between Bev's first mortgage and the second, there wouldn't have been enough equity left to pay the deposit and first month's rent."
"Kimmie Sue could have been lying," David admitted. "Or she didn't know the house was already mortgaged to the chimney cap."
"House or no house, Kimmie Sue still has a money motive," Marlin pointed out. "Homicide doubles the indemnity on Bev's insurance to fifty large."
"Follow the money." Phelps grinned. "I wish I had some for every time I've heard that."
"Damn right, Grasshopper. Name two homicides, since the day I started wishing you were never born, when the perp wasn't trying to keep his cash or was after somebody else's."
David mentally reviewed the recent closed cases and realized why Marlin asked for two examples, not one. The incident that had triggered the excessive-force lawsuit against David was in self-defense, not money-motivated.
A glare indicated how little David appreciated being included in the pop quiz. It missed its target, who was squinting up at the security monitor wired to the front door's videocam. "Screw that friggin' buzzer," Marlin muttered, and pressed a button to disengage the lock.
Nicole Ng, the department's summer intern, walked in carrying a file folder as though it might bite. The criminology major's white slacks were as dirt-streaked as her blouse. Her clean face and hands suggested she'd washed up in the ladies' as best she could.
"This is the only one I found," she said, handing the folder to Marlin, "and I looked through every carton in the basement."
His scowl softened. He may have smiled. "Good job, Nicole. I appreciate it."
"Is there anything else I can do?"
At the detective's curt
no thanks,
David said, "It's nearly quitting time, anyway, Nicole. Why don't you get a head start on the weekend?"
Junior Duckworth stood and said, "I'd better be going, myself. My brother's on a house call and I don't like leaving Mother alone too long at the funeral home."
After Marlin buzzed them out, he said, "Alone? From what I hear, LaVada Duckworth talks to dead people. And thinks they talk back."
David eyed the folder Nicole delivered. The stock was thicker, brown and had a sheen to it, unlike the flimsy manila kind he was accustomed to. The label on its tab was so old, the edges were ragged where pieces had crumbled away.
"Who's R. J. Modine?" he asked.
"Damned if I know." Marlin flipped it open, scanned a page, snorted, then threw the file on the desk. "Some drone who went missing the day after Christmas, 1951."
He lit a cigarette and took a drag, like a thirsty man sucks water up a straw. The first, David noticed, since Junior Duckworth stopped in for a progress report. Why he ceased chain-smoking when the county coroner was present was a mystery. Or maybe not.
"You had Nicole grub around in the courthouse basement for a file you don't even need?" David said.
"No, I asked her pretty please to look for a file on Royal Moody, when she had time. This Modine dude must be the closest thing to it she found."
"And you wanted the file on Moody because
"
"Hannah tried to bribe me with lunch for information on Moody going AWOL. She'd already talked to Les Williams at the PD. I told her Moody wasn't our case, but she insisted we had the file. It got me curious."
David propped an elbow on the armrest, then his jaw on a fist. "Golf, fishing, clubs, a theater group, day trips, casino junkets
You'd think with all the stuff to do at Valhalla Springs, the Mod Squad would quit playing detective."
"Toots is as bad as they are," Marlin said, then conceded, "Okay, okay. It's five against one, and she doesn't know what they're up to most of the time." He flipped an ash worm in the general direction of the plant saucer. "But she was all fired up this morning."
Phelps chuckled. "Yeah, and she was torqued when she left, too."
Another effect Marlin often had on people, David thought. Usually not Hannah, though. She prided herself on getting in the last zinger.
"Just so long as Bisbee and crew stay away from Beauford." Marlin's tone inferred a warning to David, as if it were necessary. "Which is back at square one, if you take Jarek and Kimmie Sue out of the picture."
"They aren't out," David said. "At this point, she could be the killer as easily as him."
