“I’m not surprised. I’ve played golf with him, and you get a pretty good sense of a fellow when you’re out in the sun for eighteen holes. Oh, here’s one you’ll like.”
It was a golf story, and one Newhouser had already told him, but it was no great hardship to hear it again. Doak furnished the requisite laugh, and Newhouser asked if the neighbor lady was anybody he might know.
“Probably,” he said. “Is there anybody in Gallatin County you don’t know?”
“Oh, there’s a few.”
“This one’s a nice proper suburban mommy. Name’s in the report, along with being on the tip of my tongue.”
“Hell of a place for it.”
“Roberta,” he said. “Roberta Ellison.”
“Roberta Ellison. Roberta Ellison.” Then the penny dropped. “Oh, Jesus,” Newhouser said. “Bobbie Jondahl. She married a guy named Ellison, and I could probably come up with his first name if I had to, but I can’t think of a reason to waste any of my remaining brain cells on it.”
“You want to hang on to the ones you’ve got left.”
“Amen to that, brother Doak. He’s from somewhere up in the Panhandle, came down to go to work at Zebulon Industries. Knocked up Bobbie Jondahl and married her, and I gather he’s had the good sense to keep her barefoot and pregnant ever since.”
“She’s pregnant even as we speak.”
“Little Bobbie. Looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and you can finish that sentence on your own.”
Well, that was interesting.
He weighed his options. One, he could pick up his clipboard and try to time his visit to the young Master Ellison’s nap time, whenever that might be. Two, he could take a proactive approach to his Friendship with Benefits and call Barb. Three, he could stay at his computer and do a little more research, because you never knew what you might need to know.
An hour later he was in the Mykonos Diner, sitting across the table from Sheriff William Radburn.
“I somehow missed breakfast,” Radburn said, “which is an oversight that needs to be corrected. You sure you won’t have something?”
“Just coffee.”
“Why I called, I been thinking some about our girl.”
“Our girl. That would be—”
“Oh, why mention a name in a public place? We’ll call her the lady who exercised the female prerogative and changed her mind.”
“Okay.”
“And there’s no question she did just that, because I heard her say so loud and clear on the tape you brought in. You know, I played that some more.”
“Oh?”
“I asked myself, Billy, is that a change of heart you’re hearing? And what I decided is it’s not. So I got hold of another man whose name I won’t mention just now, but he’s the one told us about the little lady in the first place. Got the ball rolling, is what he did.”
Richard Gonson.
“Now on the tape, she says she went back to him and tried to call it off, and he said it was out of his hands.”
“I remember. He told her she could just not show up.”
“Which, if you think about it, is what she should have done. Why keep a date with some homicidal Yankee if she was just gonna tell him to forget the whole thing? Only reason I can think of is to keep her options open, give herself a chance to decide at the last minute. Stand to reason?”
“I guess.”
“You have to wonder who it was first came up with the idea of link sausages. I don’t guess they give out Nobel prizes for that sort of thing, but the least you could have is a statue of him somewhere. But back to our friend.”
“The man who started it all.”
“Well, I’d have to say she’s the one started it, but he’s the one brought us into it. I asked him about this last conversation, the one where she asks him to hit the Undo button.”
“It never happened?”
“Nope. Not to say you can take this fellow’s word to the bank, but why would he lie about it?”
“Well, if she did have that conversation with him, and then he didn’t bother to pass the word to us . . .”
“Point taken. Still, I got the impression this was the absolute first time he was hearing about calling things off.”
“Which would reinforce your idea that she was keeping options open, and didn’t completely change her mind until she got into my car. You think it was the car that queered the deal?”
“ ‘Guy can’t afford a better car than this, how can you trust him to get away with murder?’ Next time maybe we’ll put you in a more suitable vehicle. If you hadn’t helped put a perfectly good automobile dealer in Raiford, I bet he could help us out. You want a refill on the coffee?”
“No, I’m good.”
“What I’m thinking, her calling it off don’t convince me she’s in love with her husband all over again. Who’s to say she doesn’t still want him dead?”
He didn’t much like where this was going. But if the sheriff was thinking along these lines, he was just as glad he got to hear it. “There must be a whole lot of women who’d just as soon be widows,” he said. “And husbands who’d love to be single again without the expense of divorce. What’s the line? ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ ”
“You’re saying there’s a big difference between having an urge and acting on it.”
“Isn’t there? What percentage of people take the action?”
“But she already took it. Shied away at the last minute, but until then she was on board. I’ll grant you there’s a chance she genuinely changed her mind, but there’s at least as good a chance she didn’t.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning maybe she called you off because she found somebody else she was more comfortable working with. Her boyfriend, say.”
“She’s got a boyfriend?”
“That shocks you? ‘By God, it’s not bad enough she wants to kill her husband, but don’t tell me she’d go so far as to cheat on him!’ ”
“Nobody mentioned a boyfriend,” he said. “That’s all. Has she got one?”
“That’s something we ought to know, wouldn’t you say? I was thinking there ought to be a way for you to earn some Gallatin County dollars.”
“You want me to find out if she’s got a boyfriend.”
“Be good to know, Doak. Be good to see what else you can find out about her. Now you’re the one person who can’t sit down and interrogate her, on account of she already knows you as Jersey City Frank. You’re shaking your head.”
“For no good reason,” he admitted. “Jersey City’s in Hudson County, and we’ve been saying Frank’s from—”
“Bergen County, and isn’t that what they call a distinction that’s not a difference? Never mind, I stand corrected. The point is you can’t ask her questions. In fact you’d best keep your distance from the woman.”
“That was my intention.”
“But you can still dig around without getting into her field of vision, can’t you? I don’t want to use one of my men, mainly because I want to keep this on the down-low, but that’s not the only reason. You’ve been in my office. You see a whole lot of bright bulbs in the chandelier?”
“Well . . .”
“And if there’s no boyfriend in the woodpile, I just can’t shake the feeling that she might just try and do it herself. Mix some rat poison in with his Raisin Bran, or find some miracle ingredient that’ll give him a heart attack. None of which she could possibly get away with, not with her having established herself as a person of interest even before there’s a case to be a person of interest in. That husband of hers dies of anything, any damn thing from galloping diarrhea to a flash flood, she’ll be hearing her Miranda rights before the body gets to room temperature. Which is fine from our point of view, but it doesn’t do a lot for George, does it?”
He’d finally mentioned a name. Not that anybody could have heard him, or made anything of it if they did.
“What keeps eating at me,” Ra
dburn went on, “is I can’t shake the notion that I ought to have a talk with him.”
“The husband.”
“Uh-huh. What stops me is there’s so many ways that can do more harm than good. ‘Thanks for your concern, Sheriff, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’ Then he goes home and thinks it over, and loads his gun, and sits up waiting for her to come home from work.”
“Jesus.”
“So maybe she’s the one I ought to be having that talk with. ‘We know what you got in mind, and no matter how slick you are, no matter who actually does the deed, no matter what kind of alibi you’ve got for yourself, anything happens to him and we’re on you like white on rice.’ ”
“And she says she doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“But she does know, and I know she knows, and she knows I know she knows. Believe me, it’s not a conversation I want to have. But how’s it look if he gets killed on my watch? Yes, I’ll close the case, but it’s my fault the man’s dead.”
Should he have seen this coming? Maybe, but what could he have done differently? And at least he was in on things, with a ringside seat.
“Don’t say anything to anybody just yet,” he said. “Let me see what I can find out for you.”
Eighteen
* * *
He held off checking his phone until he’d walked the sheriff back to his office, then returned to his car. Once again he’d left the windows all the way up, and he took it out on the highway and ran it at speed with the windows all the way down.
After a couple of miles it was cool enough for the air conditioner to hold its own. By then he was well out of town. He pulled into a rest area, got a Coke from the machine. There were tables and benches, but the county’s site maintenance didn’t extend to cleaning the birdshit off the furniture, so he drank the Coke standing up with his back against a tree.
He checked the Lisa phone, and there were no messages, nothing on his voicemail, no notification of missed calls. He’d told her not to call, and now he couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or disappointed that she’d followed instructions.
On the other phone, there was voicemail from Barb. He played it: “Call me.”
He did, and got her voicemail. “Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”
He was taking the last swig of Coke when the phone rang.
“Whew,” she said. “What a morning! This couple from Michigan, looking for a condo they can use in the winter and rent out in the off-season, or maybe a time share, or maybe this or maybe that, so I’ve got a ton of things to show them, and not much chance of closing anything, because they don’t know what they want. And you know how it always winds up, don’t you? By the time they zero in on what they’re really looking for, they’ve taken up so much of my time that they’re embarrassed. So they don’t call me, they call someone like that cunt Maggie Fitch, pardon my French, and she shows them one property and they offer the asking price, and where does that leave me?”
“High and dry?”
“At the moment,” she said, “I’m neither one of those things. And hearing your voice is making me all wet.”
“I’ve barely said a word. Is it safe to guess that you’re behind closed doors?”
“Uh-huh. Touching myself very lightly through my panties, but I could probably be talked into taking them off.”
“Why don’t you come over?”
“You’re home?”
“I could be,” he said, “in ten minutes or so.”
“You’re not in the mood for conversation, is that what I’m hearing?”
“I think I’d like something a little more hands-on.”
“Well, sugar, I already told you what my hand’s on, and what your hand’s on is strictly up to you.”
“Just think how much better the conversation could be,” he said, “with you touching yourself, same as you’re doing now—”
“And?”
“And something in your ass.”
“Something like what?”
“Something that’s getting harder the more we talk about it.”
She took a deep breath.
“Okay, we’re on the same page,” she said, “and it’s got dirty words written all over it. I can’t come now.”
“Well, don’t. Wait until we’re together.”
“I can’t come over now. Unless I cancel an appointment, and I really don’t want to do that. I could come by around four.”
“Four would work.”
“Four o’clock at your place.”
That was good, four o’clock. That gave him plenty of time to do some work for Gallatin County.
Though not necessarily the work the Sheriff expected him to be doing.
George Otterbein had turned over most of the day-to-day operations of Otterbein Kitchen Supply to his son, Alden. But he kept a suite of offices in Perry, on the second floor of a three-story red-brick building on Court House Square.
There was a café, Grounds for Divorce, two doors down from the court house and diagonally across the street from Otterbein’s building. They had little glass-topped tables on the sidewalk, and Doak took one of them and ordered an iced mocha latte and a cranberry scone. It was, he thought, quite a step for Taylor County, where the greater portion of the population thought grits was one of the four basic food groups.
A phone call earlier had established that Otterbein had gone to lunch, and Doak kept an eye on the entrance.
“Mr. O’s usually back around one,” the woman had said, “but I wouldn’t swear it’ll be like that today.”
“I guess you can’t set your watch by him.”
“Well, no,” she said. “Now that you put it that way, no, I’d have to say you can’t.”
But at five minutes before one, he recognized the man he’d seen in online photos. The face was unmistakable—a big beak of a nose, a jutting chin, overgrown eyebrows—and Otterbein was taller and heavier than his pictures had suggested, dwarfing the younger man walking at his side.
Otterbein clapped his companion on the shoulder, then parted company with him to disappear into the red-brick building. Doak settled his check, walked to his car. He’d left a seersucker jacket folded over the passenger seat. Otterbein had been wearing a suit, so he donned the jacket; Otterbein’s shirt had been open, so he left his own necktie in his jacket pocket.
“J. W. Miller for Mr. Otterbein,” he said, handing over a card. “I called earlier.”
He took a seat while the woman who couldn’t set her clock by her employer took him Doak’s card, coming back shortly to say Mr. Otterbein would see him. He found Otterbein standing in shirtsleeves behind a massive oak desk, his jacket hanging on a walnut hat tree in the corner.
“Mr. Miller,” Otterbein said. “Marcie didn’t say what this is in reference to, but I don’t suppose she asked you, did she?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“She never does. I think she’s afraid of invading your privacy, but I’m not.” He squinted at the card. “Inquiries, it says here. What’s that mean?”
“It means I wanted one card that would cover all the bases,” he said. “I’m a retired police officer from up North, getting along just fine without the cold weather. A little work now and then stretches my pension some and keeps me from rusting out.”
And why did that bring him to Otterbein’s office?
“I might have a few dollars for you,” he said. “If you’re the right Otterbein.”
Back home on Osprey Drive, he hung the seersucker jacket in the closet, took another shower. He started to get dressed, then changed his mind and put on a robe.
He found things to do on the computer, and around three-thirty he took a call from Barb. Were they still on for four?
He said they were, and a few minutes before the hour he heard her car make the turn into his drive. He was at the door when she reached it, and she met him with an open-mouthed kiss and a hand reaching into his robe.
“God, what a day
,” she said. “But you’re gonna make me forget all about it, aren’t you?”
Nineteen
* * *
At ten-thirty the next morning he was parked near the entrance to the Cinema Village fourplex at the Chiefland Mall. He didn’t have to wait long before the silver Lexus pulled alongside.
“The screens are dark until noon,” he told her. “We’re better off leaving your car at the other end, over by the Penney’s. Go find a spot and I’ll pick you up.”
She nodded and parked among the mall’s few dozen customers, and when she joined him in the Monte Carlo he must have been staring, because she asked what was wrong.
He said, “I forget how beautiful you are.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s your eyes, I think. The blue of them. It’s always more intense than I remember.”
“Do we really have a love nest? Or was that just a story?”
In bed she said, “So? Who’d you get? The pregnant lady?” Roberta Ellison, née Bobbie Jondahl.
“The other one,” he said.
“Real Estate Girl. What’s her name?”
“Barbara Hamill.”
“Do I know her? I don’t think so. Is she a Barbie Doll, all tits and a tiny waist?”
“She goes by Barb, and her waist’s a ways from tiny.”
“Is she a fatty? Do you get to wallow around in all that flesh?”
“She’s not fat.”
“Nice tits?”
“They’re okay,” he said. “Her ass is her best feature.”
“Nicer than mine?”
“There’s no part of anybody that’s nicer than any part of you.”
“Yeah, right. But Barbie’s got a great ass? Pardon me, I mean Barb. Does she make the most of it? Does she like it in the ass?”
“She does now.”
“She didn’t but now she does? Thanks to kindly old Doctor Miller?”
He told her about the phone sex, the tranny fantasy. “Yesterday,” he said, “we had some more phone sex. But without the phone.”