The Sleuth Sisters (6 page)

Chapter Six

Margaretta

I’m used to being left out of my sisters’ plans. They got stuck in the older sibling thing and never learned to see me as an adult. Honestly, Barbara Ann is the smartest woman I know, but like a lot of smart people, she’s kind of cold. Faye says it just seems that way, but what seems to be is usually what is, in my opinion. As a lawyer Barbara did well, but in life, not so much: no marriage, no family, not even a long-term commitment. I’ll tell you right now, she’s no lesbian. Just really, really reserved in the emotional department.

Faye is the classic well-intentioned woman who, with all her street smarts, never figured out how to use the brains God gave her to help herself. It’s great to serve your fellow man, but Faye takes it to the point where she’s left with just enough to get by. That’s just crazy.

When I came along, some weird bonding thing had already happened with my sisters. They think each other’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences. Still, I was surprised to hear they’d started a business together. A detective agency, no less.

It’s wrong from so many angles, even dangerous. Two fifty-something women taking on wife beaters and bail-jumpers! It’s not something a small town will take to, either, women doing the work police forces are created to do. Those forces are going to dismiss their efforts as a joke.

Add to that the fact that Faye and Barbara haven’t spent significant time together for decades. I don’t wish them ill, but it will be interesting to see how they fare in a business relationship. With all that going against them, if they were going to have any chance of making it work, they needed me. They just hadn’t realized it yet.

Let me say right now that I do not interfere in the lives of others. It never works, and furthermore, it makes people dislike you. However, once I heard about the private detective thing, I knew I had to help. In the first place, I had the exact qualities and experiences they needed to succeed.

When I dropped by Barb’s house on my return from Florida, a sign on a post out front said
Smart Detective Agency
. Their so-called office was deathly quiet, and Faye was playing Skip-Bo at her desk. It was obvious nothing was going on, but there was no way either of them would ask for their baby sister’s help. I either had to make an offer or wait around until it was too late to save their little enterprise.

Setting up shop in Barbara Ann’s house was a good move financially, but the location was wrong for a business like theirs. Too residential, too wimpy. I envisioned a more modern office, maybe in the new building the bank planned to build this summer, but of course that would be once I got them moving in the right direction so they could afford the rent.

On Faye’s desk were business cards that said
Smart Detective Agency
. Who’d patronize a business with a name like that? It brings to mind all sorts of bad connotations: smart aleck, smart ass, smarty pants. I’d have to be subtle, of course, but I’d come up with something better.

The decor was tasteful and professional: cream walls with walnut-toned furniture and polished oak floors warmed by Persian rugs. The windows were corniced, the wood the same tone as the floor, and jade-green sheers filtered light from the spring sun. Near the windows were two chairs upholstered in green and cream stripes, and centrally located was Faye’s desk, which contained, besides the basket of business cards, a phone, a computer, and a stack of books, on top her dog-eared copy of
The Poor Speller’s Dictionary
.

As I closed the door behind me, Faye’s eyes widened. “Retta! What are you doing here?” The game slid into a drawer with a discreet clunk.

“I came to see you,” I told her, raising my arms for a hug. Faye rose and embraced me, and I noticed it was harder than it had been last time to reach around her. “And Barbara Ann too, of course.” I looked around. “Where is she?”

“She’s…out.” Could they actually be working on a case?

I pointed at the desk. “What’s this? I go away for a while and you two start a business?”

“We put a lot of thought into it, Retta. We made a business plan and did the research.”

“You thought about it.”

Faye blushed, realizing she’d admitted they left me out of their plans on purpose. “It’s an income for me and a way for Barb to use her expertise. And we both can use our brains.”

“I have a brain, too.” I get exasperated with them sometimes. As a kid I was “too little” to be in on their exploits. As an adult I wasn’t neglected; birthday cards, recipes, family holidays, all the required sister stuff was there. When Don was killed, they were supportive, helping me through it and almost as sad to be unable to relieve my grief as I was bereft at the loss.

But it was only when I needed them that they came around. Otherwise they hung with each other, even when Barbara Ann lived in Washington. I was across town, but Faye called her when she needed someone to talk to. Those two thought they only needed each other.

“Did you ever think your little sister might help steer clients your way? My husband was in law enforcement, and I know most of the cops in northern Michigan.”

Faye was a bit sheepish. “We did think of that, Retta, but it didn’t seem fair to ask you to use your friendships for business purposes.”

“That’s why you won’t succeed at this,” I told her. “Of course you use your family and your friends and your postal worker and your trash collector if they can bring in clients. You use whatever you’ve got, because that’s business. It isn’t about exchanging recipes.”

Faye flinched, but I knew she knew I was right. I pulled a chair up close so we were knee to knee. “Now tell me what you’re working on.”

Her answer was uncharacteristically firm. “I can’t do that, Retta. As you say, it’s a business. We can’t talk about cases.”

“I’m here to help, you goon! How can I do that if I don’t know what you know?”

“I can’t.”

“Barbara doesn’t have to know. You tell her you dug up the information yourself.” I let her think on that. “How much money has Barbara Ann sunk into this private eye thing?”

She bit her lip. “She won’t tell me, but I think it’s a lot.”

“And are you getting the cooperation you need from law enforcement?”

“Well, Tom Stevens was nice but condescending, and Barb ran into a state cop who pretty much told her to play with the other girls and leave the men to do the work.”

I took Faye’s hands and leaned in so she couldn’t turn her eyes away from mine. “So tell me. What are we working on?”

She took a deep breath, as if she were about to jump off a dock into frigid water. “Do you remember the Wozniak case?”

I was a little taken aback. “Of course I do. Murder, escape, old man Wozniak screaming for his son-in-law’s head, it was crazy. Don worked day and night for weeks.”

“Did he ever say the husband might not have done it?”

“Oh, no. His trace evidence was all over the room: blood, fingerprints, skin under both the wife’s fingernails and her brother’s. He was there, and he attacked those people.”

“What was Don’s take on it?”

“It appeared the guy came to see his wife, maybe to try to reconcile, but they got into a fight. The brother must have been in the shower, because he was wearing just boxers. He evidently heard the ruckus and came out to help his sister. They fought, and Brown killed him.”

“Could it have happened another way? The brother attacks Neil and Carina gets in the way and gets knocked down in the struggle?”

I shook my head. “From the way the police recreated the scene, the brother was bending to help his sister when he was struck from behind.”

There was a long silence as Faye took that in. “I hadn’t heard that part.”

“You’ve been hired by the family to prove Brown’s innocence, then?” It was a guess, but not a stab. If someone was reopening the Wozniak murders, it had to be either old man Wozniak, who’d have told them that little detail, or the Browns. “Neil’s dad?”

“He died. It’s the sister.”

A vague image of an earnest teenager formed in my mind, but I couldn’t dredge up any details. “Why does she want to find her brother at this point?”

“She’s sick. She’s hoping to clear Neil so he can take over for her.”

“How awful! That family’s been through a lot, but I wouldn’t count on Brown being able to take care of his daughter. If you find him, he’s going to prison.”

“Barb told her that finding him and proving his innocence might not go together.”

“Good advice, though she probably made it sound like a threat. So what can I do?”

Faye’s eyes swept the room, trying to decide what to do, but finally she said, “The state cop who was in charge of the case doesn’t seem interested in helping us.”

“Name?”

“Uhhh, Sparks.”

“Oh, yeah. Byron is a bit full of himself. So he stonewalled Barbara Ann?”

“He gave her the basics but implied she should stick to finding runaway teens.”

Faye sighed. “You say there’s no doubt Neil Brown was at the scene. That makes our job harder, since it’s not what the client wants to hear.” She tapped on the desk with a pencil. “The only other thing we can hope for is extenuating circumstances. Maybe one of them attacked Brown. Maybe husband and wife were arguing and the brother joined in. We need to understand the relationships better.” She looked at me speculatively. “I don’t suppose you know Mr. Wozniak?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “As a matter of fact, we serve together on the Tourism Council. Stan isn’t a very active member, but he lends his name to several local organizations as a way to give them legitimacy and state-wide cachet.”

“Then he’d recognize your name if we mentioned you?”

“Better than that. I have a standing dinner invitation I haven’t yet taken advantage of.” I leaned back in the chair, pleased with myself. “If you want me to, I’ll give old Stanley a call.”

Chapter Seven

Barb

I was eager to meet Stanley Wozniak, but my call requesting an interview resulted in a dense-sounding secretary promising only to relay the message. Within ten minutes she called back with a negative. Apparently he wasn’t curious as to why a detective wanted to discuss the case.

Faye had asked around about Wozniak, and despite the fact that some waxed eloquent about his civic contributions and the state-wide prestige he’d brought to Allport, the image I got was of a self-important, stubborn man who got away with being arrogant because everything he touched turned to gold. Without many millionaires in northern Michigan, people tended to be a bit in awe of them, forgiving them their faults in return for a share of the profits.

Unable to meet Wozniak face to face, I turned to the problem of who had driven Neil Brown’s truck to Port Huron. The principal candidates for such a favor were accounted for, which left me stymied. If someone had driven the truck downstate and left it, that person had been stranded there. Who wouldn’t have been missed by the police?

Checking my notes, I found the name of the contractor Neil had worked for. When I called the number in the phone book, I got a voicemail that asked me to leave a number. He’d get back with me as soon as possible. At least he didn’t tell me how important my call was to him.

It took about twenty minutes, but Ralph Torey returned my call, his voice hopeful until I explained the reason for contacting him. He’d obviously hoped it was an offer of work.

“Yeah, Neil,” he said. “I liked the guy, but you just don’t know people. I mean, I knew they was having trouble, but nobody thought it would ever go that far. The wife was hard to take, the screechy type, but he always acted like it didn’t bother him. I guess it was different at home, though, from what the neighbors said later.”

I heard a clunk as he apparently moved the phone from one ear to the other. There was the scratch of a lighter and a sigh as that first puff of inhaled poison was released. “He wasn’t happy when she called the job site that day,” Torey said around the cigarette. “I told him his wife wanted to talk to him and he said something like, ‘She can wait till I’m ready to talk to her.’ Maybe not his exact words, but close enough, I told the cops.”

“What I wonder, Mr. Torey, is if there was someone on the job Neil might have asked to drive his truck to Port Huron. Someone who went missing for a day or so.”

“The cops asked that back then. Only guy missing was a Mexican I fired that morning.”

“One of your crew?”

“Yeah. Those people got no sense of time, y’know? He was always late and always with an excuse. I’d had it that day so I said, ‘Adios.’ Even watched him walk down the road to make sure none of my tools walked away with him, y’know?” He waited for me to agree. I didn’t.

“Anyway, they found him in Saginaw, where his family lives. He didn’t know nothing about Neil’s problems, said he hitched a ride south with a semi driver.”

“Did this man work with Neil?”

“Yeah, same crew, but like I said, I sent him on his way first thing. He ended up in Saginaw, but he coulda kept going south, y’know? Take his friends--that’d be even better.”

I kept my voice level. “The police checked his story out?”

“I guess so.”

It was a possibility. “What’s the man’s name?”

“Guillen, like the baseball player, except his first name was Juan.”

Pretty much like looking for someone named John Williams in Rhode Island. I tried all the Guillens in the Saginaw phone book, but no one answered to Juan. Some spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, so it was hard to tell if I was getting through.

Still, I had a scenario. Neil had worked with a guy from Saginaw who’d been fired that day. If Guillen had still been around Allport, he might have driven Neil’s truck to Port Huron, allowing Neil to take a different direction.

I was pleased to have found a possible explanation of how the truck got to the train station, but it was another dead end until I had a way to prove it. I cast about for other ways to learn more about the case. As I scribbled nothings on a notepad, my computer signaled an arriving email. I was surprised to find a cordial note from Detective Sparks with an attached file on the Wozniak murders. He hoped the information would get me started and ended by gently chiding me for not mentioning I was Margaretta Stilson’s sister.

The file was great, but it irritated me to find that Retta didn’t even have to be around to interfere with my life. Although the guy had apparently heard about the connection and decided to be nice to the sister-in-law of a former cop, I’d have preferred it if he helped because it was the right thing to do. Still, the file was a gold mine: Sparks’ notes on the case.

He told the story succinctly:

Police called by S. Wozniak to his daughter’s home, where they found the daughter badly hurt and the son dead. SW said he saw his son-in-law, Neil Brown, leave the apartment building in a hurry. SW reports the couple was separated.

Brown was abusive to his wife and had possibly been unfaithful. Neighbors don’t confirm that but say the Browns had noisy arguments accompanied by various things apparently hitting the wall.

Brown was last seen at the local bank about fifteen minutes after the murders were discovered. He went to his safety deposit box then left the bank quickly, saying little and acting nervous. No one admits seeing him again.

Reading Sparks’ words, I realized we’d begun with only Meredith’s version of what had happened. In our eagerness to tackle a real case, we hadn’t done the background work good detectives need to do. I began to remedy that by noting the names of the people Sparks had interviewed. The neighbor who reported violent quarrels between the Browns was Jasper Conklin. The EMT who had discovered that Carina Brown still breathed was Annamarie Bailey. I copied the names onto a sheet of legal paper.

In the phone directory I found a number for Jasper Conklin listing Windswept Drive as his address. He hadn’t moved. There was no listing for Annamarie Bailey, but there were lots of Baileys. I called fourteen of the eighteen before I got somewhere.

“She’s my niece,” a squeaky voice informed me. “Got married and moved to Wisconsin.”

“Do you have a number for her there?”

“Sorry. I don’t even remember what her husband’s name is. Von something-German.”

“Does she have relatives left in the area who might get me in touch with her?”

“Her mom’s still here, but she’s not a very trusting person, you know?”

“And no one else knows her married name?”

“I don’t know who. He wasn’t from here, so why remember it?”

“For class reunions?”

“Maybe. I don’t know who’s in charge of Anna’s class, though.”

I thanked the woman and ended the call. Since Annamarie’s mother wasn’t a trusting type, I decided to ask Faye to handle that interview while I talked to the neighbor and a Wozniak employee the papers had mentioned. My sister looked like someone you could ask to hold a purse full of hundred dollar bills in perfect confidence they’d all still be there when you come back for them. The reason she seemed that way was because it was true.