The Unbidden Truth (23 page)

“Counsel for the defense is dragging this out through malice or spite or something to no purpose, Your Honor,” Mahoney said indignantly. “Mr. Wenzel has an important meeting in the morning, and he doesn't want to be held here unnecessarily.”

The judge looked at Barbara. She shrugged and said, “I'm doing the best I can. Of course, I can always try harder.”

She thought she recognized a glint in the judge's eye that suggested that he knew exactly what she meant. He sighed, then said, “Do try harder to be brief.”

 

“Mr. Wenzel,” she said, when all the players were once again in place, “we've established that you finally spoke to your brother about Ms. Frederick's complaint on or about Monday, August fifth. Did you speak with him again that week before Thursday?”

“No.”

“Did he call you on Thursday at work?”

“No. I was home when he called.”

“Is that when he said he needed the five thousand dollars right away?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Were you surprised that you had seen him only a few days before that and he had not mentioned it then?”

“Not really. He was unpredictable.”

“On what days does your company make the electronic transfers of salaries?”

“The first working day of each month.”

“That would have been on Thursday, August first. Is that correct?”

“If that was the first working day of the month, that's correct.”

“Oh, I have the calendar here. We can refer to it—”

“Objection,” Mahoney said a bit stridently. “We stipulate that it was the first working day.”

“Thank you,” Barbara said to him, smiling. She turned back to Wenzel. “So on the first of the month your brother received his regular monthly paycheck electronically. I assume he was well paid by the corporation for his invaluable advice.”

Not a tinge of sarcasm colored her words, but Wenzel's mouth became tighter. “He was well paid,” he said. His reasonable, measured tone was starting to become a bit frayed, the words more clipped.

“Yes. In fact, I have here his bank statement at the time of his death.” She turned to Shelley, who had the sheet ready to hand her. She showed it to Mahoney, who looked it over with a frown, then to the judge, who barely glanced at it, and finally she handed it to Wenzel. “That statement shows that your
brother's account had a fifteen-thousand-dollar deposit made electronically on the first of the month, that his balance was twenty-eight thousand dollars in checking, twenty-two thousand in savings, plus some CDs, and a money market account.”

Wenzel took reading glasses from his pocket and put them on, then took a long time studying the statement. When he put it down, she said, “With that much money in the bank, accessible to him, can you account for his saying that he needed five thousand dollars right away?”

“I can't,” Wenzel said. “As I stated earlier, I was disgusted and cut the conversation short. I didn't want to talk to him when he had been drinking.”

“I see,” she said. “What time did you arrange for him to meet your wife on Friday at the auto shop?”

“I told him she would leave work to take the car over at four, and it would take her a few minutes there. He said he would pick her up at about twenty minutes after four.”

“It's about a twenty-minute drive from the shop to your house, isn't it? Possibly a little longer at the time of day on a Friday.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't time my trips to the minute.”

“If he picked her up at four-twenty, and took twenty minutes at a minimum to arrive at your house, that would put him there at about twenty minutes before five. He was at the bank at ten minutes past five and the trip back to town to the bank would have been a bit longer than going to your house, probably twenty-five to thirty minutes. I would like to set up a map to confirm the distances and possible time involved,” she said, glancing at the judge. He looked murderous. And Mahoney was livid.

“Objection! This is all irrelevant to the trial at hand!”

The judge beckoned them both to the bench. “What's your point?” he demanded of Barbara.

“Your Honor, there was not enough time allowed for a discussion between the brothers considering those times and distances to travel back and forth. Possibly Mr. Wenzel misspoke when he said he wanted to ask Joe Wenzel for advice.”

“He said he was delayed. He meant to be there earlier,” Mahoney said sharply.

“Would you like to take the stand and testify for him?” Barbara asked.

“Knock it off, both of you,” Judge Laughton said. “Ms. Holloway, I'm warning you, don't continue to drag this out indefinitely.” He motioned them away, then said, “Overruled.”

Moving leisurely, Barbara placed the map on her easel and, referring to it, made the same points. Then she said, “So he couldn't have been at your house for more than five minutes. You stated that you knew he wanted to get to the bank to cash the check and might have assumed that he would want to start back to town before five. Had you left enough time for the discussion you said you wanted with him, the advice you were seeking?”

“I thought I'd be there earlier, and it would have taken only a few minutes. We had already talked the matter over.”

“Why didn't you ask his advice on Monday when you met with him and had more time?”

“I didn't think of it then.” He had started to snap off his answers, not quite rudely, but close.

“Where were you when you realized you would be delayed?”

“I don't know exactly.”

“But at some point you must have realized it. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Does Mrs. Wenzel?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you call her to say you would be late?”

“I didn't think of it.”

“Did it occur to either of you that she could have handed your brother the check at the auto shop and have their courtesy car drive her home?”

“No.”

A dark hue had come over his face, set in hard, furious lines. With his eyes narrowed as they were, he looked like the melodrama villain getting ready to drive the young widow and her infant out into the snowstorm. And that was exactly the face Barbara had been waiting for him to show the jury. She turned back to her table and lifted a paper. It was five minutes before five, and the judge's gavel tapping on the bench was not unexpected. It was time to adjourn for the day.

 

They were met with flashbulbs, a videographer or two and several reporters. “Why are you going after Wenzel? He was in Bellingham, wasn't he?”

“Move Carrie on out, Dad,” she said in a low voice. “I'll catch up.” She smiled for the cameramen. “There are a lot of questions to be asked and answered. Since my client, Carrie Frederick, is innocent, I intend to ask them all.”

“Why him?”

“Will he be on the stand again tomorrow?”

“Is Carrie Frederick going to take the stand?”

She laughed and kept walking. “Too many, too fast. Carrie will take the stand in due time. Mr. Wenzel will be back tomorrow. I have more questions to ask him.”

“Here they come,” someone said. The videographer swung his camera around to catch the Wenzels as they walked out of the courtroom.

O
n the way home that evening Frank said, “She stirred the viper's nest with a stick today. And they're mad. Bailey, maybe from now on you should pick up Shelley and bring her to town, then drop her off on your way home.”

Bailey nodded. “Easier that way than trying to follow in fog like this.” It was already thick and would become thicker by the minute, the way it always happened this time of year. “No ticket today,” he said then. “But the cop was keeping an eye out for me. Hated to disappoint him.”

“Let's keep doing it that way,” Frank said. He was uneasy, more so than usual, he realized. He had seen the look on Larry Wenzel's face and also on Nora's. Vipers, he thought again.

Herbert met them with his big Texas smile, his big Texas “Howdy!” and his big Texas belly, Frank thought when they entered the house. Morgan grinned his dog grin and wagged
his tail in greeting. The house smelled spicy and fragrant with cloves and cinnamon, lamb and a lot of onions. Herbert motioned to Frank.

“Want to show you what I've been up to,” he said genially. “Wine's on the dining-room table,” he said to Barbara, and walked ahead of Frank to the kitchen.

Barbara grinned at Carrie. “Want a glass of wine?”

“No, thanks. I just want to stretch out for a few minutes. I don't know how you do what you do and stay on your feet. I'm wiped out.”

“I'd be too if I had to sit still all day,” Barbara said, going to the dining room.

In the kitchen, Herbert motioned Frank and went out the back door. “See, this package came today for Barbara, and Morgan here, he said, don't even touch it, partner. So I tossed it in your barrel. Sorry, Mr. Holloway. I'm afraid I ruined your rain barrel.”

The barrel was in splinters, the remnants of a package strewn about, charred and twisted. Frank felt a rush of ice water surge through him and was grateful for Herbert's hand on his arm. “Christ on a mountain,” he whispered. “Did you call the police?”

“Nope. It came about fifteen minutes ago. I figured I'd wait for y' all to get back and let you decide what to do about it.”

“How in God's name did you detonate it?”

“Not hard. Morgan sniffed it out and told me explosives were wrapped up nice and neat, and I looked for a string, or a funny little bit of tape, or something like that, and found it. Just added my own nice long bit of string and tossed it in and ran like a jackrabbit.”

“You could have been blown apart, you damn fool.”

“Wasn't though.” His grip tightened on Frank's arm. “Y' all
get the meanest fog I ever saw. Wants to dig in right to the bone.” He turned Frank and they went back inside.

Barbara entered the kitchen just as they were coming in. “Hey, you two, what's—Dad! What happened?” She rushed to him.

“He'll tell you,” Frank said, taking her glass of wine from her hand, then sitting down in the nearest chair. He watched Barbara and Herbert go back outside, and drank her wine. Gradually the ice that had claimed his veins warmed up, or retreated to wherever it kept itself, and he drew in a long breath. Herbert came in alone.

“She said she'll be in directly.”

“Where's Alan?” he asked.

“He came out when the bomb went pop, looked things over and went back to bed.”

Frank nodded, stood up and went to the wall phone to call Bailey on his cell phone. He kept his message short. After telling the bare facts about the bomb, he said, “Go in with Shelley and talk to your man out there. If his dog isn't trained in sniffing explosives, get one that is. Intercept all packages. You know the drill.” He listened a moment, then said, “No, don't come back. This place will be crawling with police. We'll see you in the morning.”

Barbara came in then, her face set in furious lines. She marched past Frank to the dining room and brought back the bottle of wine and another glass. “Hoggarth,” she said. “Do you have a number where I can reach him without going through a bunch of troglodytes first?”

“I'll call him,” Frank said. He took the wine from her and poured for them both. She seemed to have forgotten to take that next step. “You're too mad to talk to anyone.”

“And a bomb squad,” she said. “No flashing lights, no sirens, and for God's sake no reporters!” She practically snatched the glass from his hand and drank as if it contained water. “I have to warn Carrie,” she said, setting the glass down hard. “My God, I want to go shoot that goddamn bastard!”

“I'd better make us up some snacks,” Herbert said, watching Barbara stride out with an awed expression. “She knows the words and she knows the tune, if you get what I mean. And she used them all out there. Anyways, dinner's going to get on the table a little bit late, I reckon.”

Frank went to his study to look up Lt. Hoggarth's cell phone number and make the call. Milt Hoggarth was in homicide, but if Barbara had been the one to open that package, that was exactly the investigative squad who would now be on the scene.

 

Later, the lead detective in the bomb unit talked to Herbert in the living room while the technicians set up bright lights and went to work at the site of the shattered barrel, and Hoggarth sat with Frank and Barbara in the study. Morgan set up a din when the men all arrived, and subsided when Herbert gestured to him. Herbert did not introduce any of the detectives, and Morgan watched and quivered from time to time, but he didn't bark again.

“Frank, give me something to go on,” Hoggarth was saying in the study. “You can't stonewall something like this.” He was red-faced, with a red scalp, and previously red hair fading to gray in a tonsure. He kept rubbing his hand over his head as if he couldn't believe it was bare.

“Milt, if you were freelance I'd probably want to hire your services now and then, but you aren't. There are people over
you with people over them, and I don't trust any of them worth a damn.”

Hoggarth looked from him to Barbara. He was as grim as she had ever seen him, and increasingly furious with them both. “And that's it,” he said. “An unknown enemy sent you a bomb. Goddamn fucking period.”

“After the trial's over,” she said coldly, “I'll make you a captain yet, Lieutenant. It's worth waiting for.”

“Right. That's what I'll put in my report.”

“Hoggarth,” Barbara said softly, “I can offer a suggestion. It doesn't have to go into a report. Have someone keep an eye on the Wenzel crew. It wouldn't hurt a thing to let them spot someone, and of course you'd deny it come hell or high water if they complained.”

His expression changed from furious to a bleak, remote mask.

At the same time Frank said, “Barbara!” That tiger had already been baited and didn't need any additional teasing.

“It's all right,” she said. “He won't do it, and I won't say another word.”

In her room upstairs Carrie stood at the window watching the men working under the bright lights. She had turned off her own light. Barbara had said she should not leave her drapes open even a second when the lights were on in the room.

The room was warm, but she couldn't stop shivering. She was remembering the boys with cap guns, running, falling. Not cap guns, she thought suddenly, louder. Like a bomb would sound.

She closed her eyes, but nothing else followed the flash of memory. Instead, she saw the other little girl sitting at a table on a terrace, playing with Tookey, talking to him in a low voice about a parade. She would ride on his back and they
would lead the parade with a million people watching and a million people marching and singing.

 

“How's the little June bug?” Uncle Silly said, coming out to the terrace.

“I'm not a bug.”

“Sure you are. You hatched out of your egg in the month of June, and that makes you a June bug. You know what your sign is? Gemini, that's what. The sign of the twins.”

“I don't have a twin.”

“Yes, you do. She's invisible. So she can go places you can't go, she can see things you can't see and hear things you can't hear. She knows things that you don't know, but sometimes she'll whisper to you and tell you if you listen hard.”

“I don't have a twin and I'm not a bug.”

“Cyrus, stop teasing her,” Aunt Loony said. “Come on, Carolyn, time to wash your hands for dinner.”

 

Carrie didn't move or open her eyes when the memory stopped as abruptly as it had started. She summoned her special memory box and carefully stowed the memory inside. “Cyrus,” she whispered. That was his name. Uncle Cyrus.

Then, keeping her eyes closed, she said under her breath, “Carolyn, please tell me more. You know things I don't know. I'll listen hard if you'll please just tell me more.”