The Unbidden Truth (7 page)

She turned over another picture. “That's the first truck they fixed up to haul workers. See—seats, a canopy. Here's the four of us by the next truck they fixed up.”

She had been tiny, slender and delicate-looking and very pretty. Nora was a lot taller, with fair hair, also pretty. And the brothers were handsome and very alike, muscular, with dark wavy hair, big smiles. They were both armed. Larry had a rifle and Joe had a gun belt with a handgun.

“Did they always carry weapons?” Barbara asked.

“Always out on the desert and going down to Mexico. Banditos, rattlesnakes, gila monsters. No one ever bothered any of us, but you never knew, it was always a chance. You needed a gun out there. We all could shoot.” Then she said, “I don't know if Joe would of shot anything, but he could shoot a target real good.”

“What do you mean? He wouldn't have shot a snake or bandito?”

“He threw rocks at a rattler once and everyone was yelling to shoot it, but he wouldn't. He drove it off. And he'd never watch movies with a lot of blood, anything like that. He was real gentle in those days. Strong as an ox, and gentle.” She turned over another picture.

There were many pictures of the four of them and their
truck. Barbara held one of them. “Would you mind if I take one? Or I could get a copy made and return the original.”

“No. No. Just take it. I got plenty more. Here's a big apartment they did. Isn't it nice?”

She talked about some of the other jobs, then said dreamily, “Those early days, they were good. We'd sit around with the crew at night sometimes, and they'd play their guitars and sing, and Joe taped them and played it back. They liked that.”

“Who was managing the business end of it all?” Barbara asked when she paused.

“That was Nora and H.L. They got the permits and all that. He taught her a lot, I guess. He'd get the plans drawn up, and they'd go for the permits, and then he'd be gone for days or even weeks at a time. Scouting other jobs, I guess. Joe and Larry were going back and forth from one job to another to make sure things were going right. And we were going down for workers a lot, then taking them back. Sometimes they'd have three or four jobs going at once.”

When they finished the pictures, Barbara said, “No picture of H. L. Blount?”

Inez laughed. “He said he was camera shy. The camera would steal his soul. Isn't that silly for an old man?”

“How old was he?”

“Then I thought he was old, now I'd say maybe forty-five. But I was young and he looked old to me.”

“What happened? Why did they give up a business that seemed to be doing so well?”

“I don't know. One day Joe went to the job to wait for the workers. Larry and Nora went for them that time, and they said H.L. messed up. He always made the deals with the workers. But no one showed up at the pickup place that day,
and they came back without anyone to do the work, and then they all got into a big fight. Joe wouldn't tell me what it was about. Maybe not finishing the job on time, something like that. I just don't know. The first real fight they ever had. We all quarreled sometimes—people do—but that was different. Then he said he wanted to go to school, to study business, and we went up to Los Angeles. It all happened so fast. One day everything was fine, then they fought, and the next week we were in Los Angeles.”

She gave one of her big sighs. “It didn't work out. Joe began to drink a lot. We all drank beer before, down here most people do. But he began to drink a lot and he began to go after girls. He never did that before. We started to fight a lot, too, and we never did that before. Everything changed. And he went to rock concerts all over the state, hardly stayed at home, and when he was home he was studying or fooling around with his tapes. He wanted me to talk dirty. In bed, you know? Talk dirty.” She looked embarrassed. “I wasn't brought up like that. I said what am I here for and came back home. I told him he knew where to find me if he straightened out, but he never came back. So I got a divorce, and met Juan and we got married and it worked out after all. Three beautiful daughters, four grandchildren. You never know what's going to work out, do you?”

“I don't think so,” Barbara said. “What about Larry? Did he continue the business down here after Joe went to school?”

She shook her head. “H.L. took off, too, after the big fight, and I guess Larry just finished the things he already started. And a couple of years later, they were all out of here.”

She emptied the pitcher into Barbara's glass. “Do you want more? It won't take a minute to mix up some more.”

Barbara glanced at her watch. Four o'clock. She had been with Inez for three hours. “Thanks, but no. I've already taken up too much of your time. You've been very kind and generous to talk to me. I appreciate it.”

“I liked it,” Inez said with a smile. “I haven't thought of those years in a long time, and never talked to anyone about Joe. You don't talk about your first husband with the second husband.”

 

Barbara had parked in the shade of a palm tree, but the shade had moved and the car was an inferno. She turned the fan on full blast and opened windows, then moved to another patch of shade and considered her next step. The thought of the motel for the evening was disheartening. Instead, she found a convenience store, bought a six-pack of water and headed east, out to the desert. She wanted to see what kind of country Joe and Larry had braved to become developers.

An hour later, she pulled over to the side of the road, contemplating the vista before her. Rocky, rough ground, mountainous, dun-colored, so hot and dry that not even cactus could grow more than a few inches high. It looked like rocks. Nothing moved out there, not a tree was in sight, not a building nor a person. The car had an outdoor thermometer; the needle was off the dial that stopped at 120 degrees. Enough, she told herself, and turned around to start back to the motel.

S
he walked to Frank's house on Monday, breathing deeply in the rose garden with its intoxicating perfume. Pools of cool shade, pools of hot sunlight and green everywhere that flowers were not. Then she breathed even more deeply on the river trail, fragrant with river smells and blackberries. She wondered how anyone could choose to live in a place where the only green thing visible was a golf course that was probably toxic with pesticides, fungicides and herbicides.

Frank was not home when she arrived. She let herself in and walked straight through to the back porch, shaded and cool, with myriad flowers and shrubs to gaze at. There she stretched out on a lawn chair, content.

Waiting for Frank, she began to wonder if her trip to Southern California had been worth the strain of air travel. All in all, she brooded, the telephone would have been easier and
probably yielded as much. Then she remembered the snapshot Inez had given her, and she got it from her purse. The truck was dirty, dust-covered, with an alteration that looked home-made, and had a few dents. The idea of traveling in that hellish country in such a truck made her shudder. But it was good to have a clear image of the Wenzel brothers when they were young and starting out. Despite the two years' difference in their ages, they were enough alike to be twins, she thought, then put the picture down on the table at her side when she heard a car in the driveway.

Frank came around the corner with Darren. They were carrying a big plastic can of some sort, and she remembered that Frank had said he would put in a water barrel. Frank saw her and waved, and after putting the barrel down, Darren waved. He walked out of sight around the house again, and Frank joined her on the porch.

“Hi. Darren's getting some concrete blocks out of the truck. I'll set that barrel on them and let gravity do its thing when the barrel fills with water.”

Carefully she said, “I just dropped in to say hello. I won't be staying long.”

Frank looked at her in surprise. “Is dinner off?” Then he said, “Oh. He isn't staying. We used his truck to haul things.”

Darren was back with a garden cart and the concrete blocks. After unloading them near the side of the greenhouse, he came to the porch. “Hello, again,” he said to Barbara. “A drink of water and I'll be out of here. Todd's waiting for me at the house. Today's planting day, rain or no rain.”

“Help yourself,” Frank said. “I'll get that catnip start for Todd. It has good roots. Just tell him to keep it watered and weeded, and keep it caged.”

Darren went inside for water, and Frank went out for the catnip. Barbara felt churlish and mean, but helpless. Darren was doing her father a favor, that was all it amounted to.

Darren returned with his water and glanced at the snapshot she had put on the table. Slowly he set down the glass and picked up the picture. He studied it a long time before he replaced it.

“I haven't seen one of those in many years,” he said. “It brings back memories.” His voice had changed. This was how he had talked about his internment in the juvenile detention camp in the California desert when he was a teenager, after the gang he had run with had been busted on drug charges. He sounded lazy and detached, almost dreamy.

“What do you mean? You know about trucks like that?” she asked.

“Sure do. We used to see them now and then, hauling illegals to work and back. Some of the guys told me they hauled more than human cargo.” He picked up the snapshot again and, pointing, held it out for her to see. “Look at the floor and the benches for the human cargo. It's a unit, detachable with little effort, but when it's bolted in place over the bed of the truck you have something like a bus. Take the benches out with the floor, and you have another cargo space. They hauled a lot more than workers.”

Frank came back with the potted catnip, and Darren put the snapshot on the table and took the plant. He gave Barbara a searching look, then said, “You don't want to tangle much with folks who used those trucks. See you later.”

Frank walked around the house with him, and Barbara picked up the snapshot and studied it again. There were no markings on the truck, and now that it had been pointed out to her, she could see that the wood floor was too high.

When Frank returned, he picked up the snapshot and examined it closely. “He told me they used that space for drugs. Guns in, drugs out. It has nothing to do with Carrie and the here and now. Leave it alone, Bobby.”

“That was thirty years ago,” she said. “I doubt there's much anyone can do about it now. It's just another interesting datum.” She put the snapshot back in her purse. “Actually, I wanted a snapshot to show the kind of countryside they were working in. Hot as hell, nothing alive as far as you can see.” Then she thought of Darren living out on that same desert for seven years from the age of fourteen until he was twenty-one. She didn't know how anyone could endure it.

A little later, while Frank was preparing dinner, she told him about her visit with Inez. “And that was the end of marriage number one. Inez doesn't know what happened, and I guess neither Larry Wenzel nor his wife is going to tell us.”

“Well, if they were into smuggling, that's cause for blackmail,” Frank said, dicing potatoes.

“Not if Larry and Joe were both involved,” she said. “And apparently they were both in up to their necks. At least until 1972 when Joe skedaddled.”

They ate on the back porch and lingered as daylight faded and the colorful garden turned into shades of violet-gray and black. Then Frank drove her home. He wouldn't think of allowing her to walk home in the dark, he said emphatically when she protested.

At her apartment building, he put his hand on her arm when she opened the car door. “Hang on a second. Tell me what you have against Darren. I like him quite a lot.”

“I know you do. And I'm coming to think of him as a pal,
sort of a brother, someone you can turn to for a favor now and then. Okay?”

He grunted and put the car in gear. “Good night. I'll see you in the morning.” He didn't believe a word she had said, he thought, driving home again. But, by God, he added to himself, she was stubborn.

Inside her apartment Barbara cursed briefly. That had been a perfect chance to recite her spontaneous remark about Darren and gratitude, and she had forgotten.

 

The next morning Barbara told Shelley and Bailey about her conversation with Inez. “H. L. Blount is a mystery man who wouldn't have his picture taken, and who likely made whatever drug deals were being made, as well as lining up the workers. Your job, Bailey. See if there's a shred of information about him in the universe. He was about forty-five then, and may well be dead and forgotten. Also, I want an enlargement of the truck and the Wenzel group.” She handed the snapshot to Bailey, then turned to Shelley. “Your turn.”

“Right,” Shelley said. “I'll do the last wife first because she was a dud, and I didn't get a thing from her. She's Tiffany Olstead, up in Seattle. Joe promised her that she'd see the world, travel to exotic places. She said all she ever saw were airplanes, hotel rooms, horses and roulette wheels. She lasted eighteen months, late 1988 to 1990. He never worked a day that they were together. Then I stopped to see Alexis O' Reilly in Portland, wife number two.”

She drew in a long breath. “They got married in late 1975, and they built the house that burned down. He was still working for the company. She said he drank, but not a whole lot. He was very much into rock music. Buying tapes, fooling
around with them, making his own selections to retape to play in the car. I had the feeling that they had a decent marriage for the first couple of years.

“Then, things changed. Just like with Inez,” she added. “She doesn't know why, or what happened, but he began to drink a lot, and he became abusive. Not physically, but hurtful things he would say began to rankle. And he stopped going to work. He didn't explain, just said he was through working. He began going to a lot of concerts, taping them. And he began gambling a lot more. She had a job—she's a dietician at a Portland hospital now, back then she worked at Sacred Heart—and she couldn't leave all the time, and he went to the track, or Las Vegas, wherever without her. In 1979 she found out that he had been sleeping with Nora,” Shelley said in a hushed voice.

When no one in the office stirred, she continued. “Alexis said when she found out, she packed up and left and took a lot of his things with her. She was really furious and wanted to make him sorry. She took a box full of his music tapes, racing forms, other racing stuff. He kept notebooks about horses, who sired which colt, track records, things like that, and she took all she could lay her hands on. When she filed for divorce he begged her to give it all back, and she told him she had burned everything, but she hadn't. She still had the box of his belongings, and she gave it to me. She just wanted to get rid of everything of his now, but couldn't bring herself to dump anything or destroy the tapes.”

This time when Shelley paused, Barbara exhaled softly. “Jackpot,” she said. She thought a moment. “Even if there was an ongoing affair between Joe and Nora, how could that lead to his blackmailing Larry?”

“Maybe he was blackmailing Nora,” Shelley said. “If she is as much a part of the company as Larry is, that might work.”

Barbara nodded. “It could be. Anything in that line apparent, Bailey?”

He shook his head. “I haven't found a soul who knows much about them. No live-in help, just a day cleaner who shows up while they're both gone, and takes off before they get home. They eat out a lot, order food in, or else Nora cooks. If she has close friends, they're closemouthed. I'm still digging.”

“Well, we have two dates to work with,” Barbara said. “In 1972 Joe took off after a big fight and never went back to the desert again. Then in 1978 or '79 he stopped working, but never missed a payday.”

Frank, who had been listening intently, now cleared his throat. Barbara turned to him and waited.

“It seems to me,” Frank said, “that the Wenzels have a lot of secrets in their past. Most families do. And it also appears that unless one of them writes a memoir, you'll never learn what those secrets are. Smuggling? Probably. Affairs? Not unlikely. But what good that will do your client in the here and now is problematic. How good are those alibis, Bailey?”

Bailey shrugged and shook his head. “Cast iron, as far as I can tell.”

Frank turned his gaze back to Barbara. “So, no matter what you can dig up about smuggling, blackmail or anything illegal in their past, it won't matter in Carrie's trial.”

“But it's connected. I feel it in my bones.” She eyed Bailey speculatively. “If Nora has no close friends to confide in, maybe we should introduce her to someone. What's Sylvia up to these days?”

Sylvia Fenton at sixty-plus years was the most outrageously flamboyant woman in the whole Willamette Valley, happily married to one of its richest men. No one ever knew if she would appear with hair canary-yellow, jet-black, or fire-engine red, and her clothes were equally garish. A former off-Broadway actress, she had captivated Joseph Fenton when he was visiting New York on a diamond-buying mission for his family's jewelry business many years before. Once accepted, Sylvia had established herself as a trendsetter, one who could galvanize any committee she served on to produce results. She just incidentally liked to play cops and robbers on Bailey's behalf now and then.

Bailey complained sometimes that she bugged him endlessly when she became bored, wanting a new assignment, a new thrill. He regarded Barbara with narrowed eyes, then nodded. “I think Nora would be excited to be included in Sylvia's inner circle.”

“Nothing too fast,” Barbara said. “Tell her to take it easy, let Nora think she's taking the lead. Can do?”

“I'll see,” Bailey said.

Frank recalled the first time he had met Sylvia, whose maid had suspected that her mother had died of neglect in a nursing home. No one had been able to find out a thing until Sylvia had gone in as a cleaning woman, scrubbed toilets, mopped, did whatever she had to do, and got the goods on the place. She was first and foremost an actress, no matter how big her bank account was. She would do fine, he thought, nodding.

Bailey had not yet found out anything about Carrie's parents. “I ruled out about a dozen guys named Frederick. That's progress, I guess. Just a couple hundred to go.”

“Okay, so it's just more of the same for now,” Barbara
said. “I have an appointment with the motel manager this afternoon. And I have a list of the motel guests for the night of the murder, all accounted for, respectable, etcetera.” She handed the list to Bailey. “We'll want that verified eventually.” She spread her hands. “And that's it.”

After the others had left, she sat behind her desk considering the coming weeks and months. If nothing developed, there was little she could do, she reflected, just wait for the trial and go in empty-handed. Eventually, she might have to talk seriously with Carrie about the possibility of a plea bargain.