The Secret Keeper (6 page)

“I’m sure they’ll understand.”

He was silent a moment, then said, “I’m glad you suggested this trip, but I’m really going to miss you.” Picking up the remote to turn off the TV, he stood up. “Want me to show you how much?”

Oh, yeah!
I thought, but said nothing and merely got up from the couch, took his extended hand and let him lead me toward the bedroom.

*

Assuming for the moment that I wasn’t being paranoid in thinking that the shooting and Jonathan’s being followed were related and did have something to do with Clarence Bement’s death, the most logical explanation for it was that somebody for some reason thought Jonathan knew something he shouldn’t. What that might be, I had no idea, and doubted if Jonathan did, either.

From what he’d said, only two other people had seen him with Bement—the housekeeper and Bement’s grandson. Since I couldn’t imagine the housekeeper luring him out to an isolated road or driving a Mercedes, plus the fact that it was a man who had called him, on the surface at least, that narrowed the field down quite a bit.

From what I’d gathered, Bement had a pretty dysfunctional family, and the lure of money is always a strong motive for murder. Then again, that raised the question of how anyone else in the family could even have known about Jonathan.

Jonathan had told me Bement said something about his housekeeper spying on him. If he was being serious, that might open the door a bit wider. I made a note to definitely have a talk with the housekeeper, and also with the grandson, Mel…Fowler.

If it was not the grandson, there was the possibility that whoever took a shot at Jonathan might not even know exactly what he looked like. Since he drove a rather easily identifiable pickup truck with “Evergreen” on the doors and tailgate, and it had been parked frequently at Bement’s home, it wouldn’t be necessary to know what the driver looked like to target it.

At least, that’s what I hoped. It was a weak theory, but it was also another reason I wanted Jonathan to take my car to work the next day.

*

“I think you should take Joshua to Happy Day and pick him up until we leave,” Jonathan said as we dressed in the morning. “I don’t want him with me.”

I understood and shared his concern. “I can do that,” I said, “but assuming whoever it is doesn’t know what you look like, it’s your truck he’d be watching for so it’s best that we keep Joshua away from it. You’ll be driving my car, which he won’t recognize, so I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

He thought a minute, then said, “I suppose.”

I was tempted to follow him to work, but if I was right about the shooter only recognizing the truck, it wouldn’t be the brightest move to follow Jonathan around in it. Instead, I left the house when they did and arrived at work a few minutes early. Though I knew Marty wouldn’t be at work yet and would call me as soon as he could, I left another message for him.

I didn’t want to tie up the phone by calling the airline for reservations until I heard from Marty, so began my customary coffee/newspaper/crossword puzzle ritual more as a matter of habit than with any real interest. 

At eight thirty, just as I was only halfheartedly paying attention to the crossword puzzle and struggling to find a three-letter word for “unworldly and vague” (fey), the phone rang.

“Hardesty Investigations,” I said on picking it up, though I hoped it was Marty. It was.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Two calls—it must be important.”

“It is,” I replied, and quickly told him what had happened. “I know it could just be a freak accident,” I said, “but I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t think there was some validity to Jonathan’s belief.”

“I understand. Where’s the truck now?” 

“In the parking lot right across from my office. I had Jonathan take my car today.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Marty said. “I’ll send somebody over to take a look at it.”

“You want me to meet them at the truck?”

“That won’t be necessary. Just give me a description and the plate number.”

“I don’t have the plate number, but you can’t miss it. It’s got ‘Evergreen Nursery’ on the doors and tailgate, and I’ll run down and unlock it and tell the lot attendant.” I then reiterated my belief that Jonathan might be right about Bement’s death.

“One thing at a time,” he said. “For now, we’ll have to handle it as a routine police report, since we don’t know that it has any relation to Clarence Bement’s death. They’ll want to talk to Jonathan to find out exactly what happened. He works at Evergreen? The one out on Hollister? Do you have their phone number handy?”

I gave it to him. “They’d better call first. Sometimes he works in the yard and sometimes he goes out on jobs with a crew.”

“Will do,” he said. “And I’ll be sure to pass the report on to Howie Garland and Dave Angell—they’re the team looking into Bement’s death. You want to catch lunch? Dan’s got a dentist appointment, and you and I can talk a little more about all this.”

“That’d be great,” I said. “My treat. Sandler’s okay? You name the time.”

“Sandler’s is fine. Say twelve fifteen?”

I called Evergreen to make sure Jonathan would be there and to give him a heads-up.

Leaving the office, I went downstairs and across the street to the parking lot to unlock the truck and alert the attendant that the police would be showing up at some point. I left my office phone number with him in case the investigating officers might need something, then returned to my office.

I called the airlines for reservations. American had a nine a.m. flight to Chicago Saturday morning, with a connecting commuter flight to Rhinelander, getting them there at three fifteen. I scheduled a return flight for the following Friday, getting them back here at two forty-five p.m.

If I’d had my druthers, I’d have left the return date open and kept them away until I was absolutely positive what was going on. But Jonathan had pointed out, rightly, that he could only take so much time off from work, and that Joshua shouldn’t miss more time away from school—it might only be kindergarten but it was important—than was absolutely necessary. I reluctantly agreed.

The rest of the morning was spent on paperwork and paying bills and general office puttering. At around eleven forty-five, I took the bus to Sandler’s Restaurant, about two blocks from police headquarters in the City Annex building. I didn’t worry about the police showing up while I was gone; I figured they’d be taking their lunch at the same time.

As usual, I was early and was able to get the last available table. The waiter was just on his way over to refill my coffee when Marty appeared. We shook hands as he slid into the padded bench opposite me.

After the usual small talk, the pouring of coffee, the looking at menus, and the ordering, he got right to the point.

“So. I’m really sorry to hear about Jonathan, but do you really think someone deliberately shot at him? And that it had anything at all to do with Clarence Bement’s death?”

“Odd as it may sound, yes and yes. Exactly why and what I don’t know.”

He took a sip of his coffee before saying, “Well, Al Pardue and George Stein have been assigned to investigate the shooting, and I think they were planning to go see him today.”

“Why aren’t—Angell and Garland?—looking into it? Having two sets of detectives on the same case is bound to be confusing.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, but that’s just it—we aren’t sure it
is
the same case yet. I ran into Howie and Dave after I talked with you and asked them if there were anything new in the Bement case.

“Howie’s a great guy, but he’s up for retirement in a couple of months, and he’s pretty much just going through the motions. Dave’s been on the force for eight years, but only recently made detective. He pretty much takes his cues from Howie, and Howie says there’s not much doubt but that it was a suicide. They said they were going to talk to a few more of Bement’s relatives, but it sounds like they’re pretty much ready to pack it away.”

I knew Marty well enough to tell he wouldn’t have gone into the detectives’ backgrounds unless he had a reason.

“But you’re not so sure they’re right?”

The waiter came with our food, and we devoted the next few minutes to eating, until Marty said, “Well, unless Howie and Dave decide to consider it a homicide, there’s nothing much I can do. But if you do come across a solid link between Jonathan’s incident and Bement’s death…”

“Yeah, I definitely do plan to do a little poking around,” I said. “Somebody took a shot at Jonathan, and whether it was accidental or deliberate, I want to know more about it.”

Marty grinned. “I figured that’s what you’d say.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been churning over something Marty had told me when he first described the report on Bement’s death, and suddenly it all gelled.

“You know,” I began, putting my thoughts into words for the first time, “something about that report on Bement’s death has really bothered me.”

“What’s that?” 

“The fact that it supposedly took him two tries to kill himself. The report said he had a contact wound on the skull and residue on his hand, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Well, if the killer had come up behind him, put the gun directly to his head and fired, it would cause the powder/contact burn at the site of the wound. But in order to get residue on Bement’s hand, the killer would have had to put the gun in Bement’s hand and use it to fire the second shot, the one that went into the wall. That’s why there were two shots—to cinch the suicide theory. And because Bement was ninety, nobody questioned it as they might have done if he were thirty.”

Marty just sat there staring at me, then slowly raised an index finger to his temple and tapped it. “Good thinking, Detective Hardesty. How many people would have thought of that? If it walks like a duck—I can’t say that’s what happened, but you can bet I’ll have a talk with Garland and Angell.”

We finished lunch and went our separate ways with promises to keep in touch and let each other know what was going on.

*

I stopped at the parking lot across from work to see if the police had been there, and was told they hadn’t, so I went on up to my office to see if I had any phone messages. There was one from Jonathan.

“Hi, Dick. I’ve got to get back to work but wanted to let you know the police were here and I talked to them. They wanted to know everything about how and where it happened, and I told them. They said people were always shooting off guns in the woods, and it was probably just a stray bullet.

“When I told them I thought it might have something to do with Mr. Bement’s death, and said I thought I’d been followed the other day, they didn’t seem impressed. Maybe they thought I was just being paranoid. They took down the information and said they’d pass it on to whoever is looking into Mr. Bement’s death, but I don’t know if they will or not. Anyway, we’ll talk when we get home. Oh, and did you call the airline? Bye.”

Considering that two separate sets of partners were looking into what they all probably considered two separate incidents, it was unlikely they would have the time or the inclination to exchange speculations. I wasn’t overly confident that much would be done.

I’d had occasion in the past to drive out Woods Road several times and remember noting that the few signs along the way were riddled with bullet holes from being used for target practice. So, I didn’t feel overly confident the police would assume it was anything other than a stray bullet that had hit Jonathan’s truck.

I waited another half-hour then decided to go back downstairs to check with the parking lot attendant to see if the police had been there yet. As I walked into the lot, I could see an unmarked police car—I don’t know why they don’t mark them, I can spot them a mile away—parked in front of Jonathan’s truck, with one guy standing beside the passenger door and another inside.

I walked over as the guy inside got out and joined his partner at the front of the truck. I introduced myself, telling them I was a P.I., which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. They did not introduce themselves.

“Yeah,” the one who’d been inside the truck said, “your buddy told us.”

“And you are…Pardue or Stein?”

They seemed surprised I’d know their names.

“Sorry,” the one who’d talked said, extending his hand. “I’m Al Pardue. This is my partner George Stein.”

We exchanged handshakes, and I asked if they had come to any conclusions after talking with Jonathan and looking at the truck.

“Well, we found the bullet under the seat,” Pardue said, “but I can’t see it will do us much good. Looks to be a twenty-two. But the angle from the hole in the window to the hole in the seat indicates it was fired from slightly above. There’s an old railroad bridge that crosses Woods Road just inside the city limits, and from what your buddy said, we figure that’s probably where the shot came from.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“For one thing, it’s just the place some idiot teenager out to scare the shit out of somebody would choose. For another, if the shot had come from ground level, it probably wouldn’t have penetrated the windshield.

“Most people don’t realize it, but most bullets fired head-on will bounce off a windshield. It has to do with the angle of incidence, the slant of the windshield, and a bunch of other technical mumbo-jumbo. A shotgun blast at close range would have been a different story, but a small-caliber rifle fired from a distance…”