Red Man Down (20 page)

‘He ran and cried to Cecelia, who called Chico. Chico called Ed and said, “Eddie, now, remember whose boy you are; after all, we all raised you, not just Frank.” Angela called him back and said, “He’s my boy now, get off his back.” She stood firm against the whole clan. And although Ed wavered at first, in the end he supported her, because for the first time ever he had a life of his own and he loved it.’

‘What went wrong?’ Ollie asked her. ‘Was it Frank’s arrest?’

‘Yes. Ed felt so
obligated
to fix it. He kept saying, “He rescued me when I was little, now I gotta help him, I owe it.” He did what he could, hired an attorney, talked to everybody who would listen. But then Frank killed himself. He might as well have shot Ed first – it might have been better for everybody if he had. But no, he shot himself and left that stupid note.’

‘Ah, yes, the note,’ Sarah said. ‘Where is it, do you know?’

‘You mean you don’t have it?’

‘No, we can’t find it. Did Angela keep a stash of anything at the store? Or at your house?’

‘I live above the store. No, Angela never left anything with me. I think she had a trunk in storage somewhere.’

‘We have that, but there’s no note. No correspondence of any kind, by the way. Didn’t Angela have any family?’

‘Cousins back in Poland, but they don’t read or write English, and I think by now Angela probably had lost most of her Polish. I know I have. I think that was part of why she and Ed were so close – each of them was all the other had.’

‘Except Uncle Frank.’

‘Yes. But Frank was so … I don’t know … odd.’

‘In what way?’

Marjorie shrugged, turned her hands over in a helpless gesture and sighed. Finally she said, ‘I didn’t know him well, so maybe I missed something. But what I knew … He was shy, I guess. Almost … furtive. Like a little scared rabbit. Angela said she believed Frank, after his wife and baby died, felt too guilty to have anything in his life but work until he adopted Ed. In a sense, she said, they saved each other.’

‘But you know,’ Ollie said, ‘Ed Lacey was a successful police officer for many years. And not to boast or anything, but you don’t keep a job in law enforcement by being a wuss.’

‘I know. Angela knew it too, and she was so proud to be married to a man who could be as gentle as Ed was at the food bank, and yet be tough enough to be a patrolman in Tucson. She said he was living proof that if you were willing to work hard enough you could make yourself into the person you wanted to be.’

‘Wow,’ Ollie said. ‘Wouldn’t I like to get praise like that from my wife.’

‘Maybe you do and you just don’t listen,’ Marjorie said, and got one of Ollie’s trademark ironic smiles in reply. ‘When Ed passed all his tests to teach at the academy, she was
so happy
for him. They both saw it as the validation of what he had achieved.’

‘I guess I didn’t see any of that when we talked,’ Sarah said. ‘She seemed kind of … detached and cold.’

‘She was walking wounded when you saw her. She had really been sure that this time she had something so solid nothing could wreck it. And then something did.’

‘She must have been very angry.’

‘She was furious at the credit union, yes. Not at Ed. She said what happened to him with the alcohol and drugs was mostly owing to his extreme naiveté. He’d never tried drugs or drinking or gone around with the boys who did. And being a policeman, he thought he was pretty sophisticated. Well, he was – about other people’s faults. But he didn’t realize how vulnerable
he
was. By the time he knew, he was hooked.’

‘So in substance,’ Sarah said, ‘you still don’t think she killed herself.’

‘I feel very certain she didn’t. She was grieving for Ed, of course. But defending him the way she had earlier had given her a new sense of what she could become. As soon as she healed up a little and figured out her next moves, I was looking for her to get a better job and build her life back, stronger than ever.’

‘Was her new haircut a first step, do you think?’

‘Maybe. She really surprised me – just showed up one day with a fresh do and when I told her it looked great she said it was all part of the plan.’ Marjorie put her two hands together in a supplication pose. ‘It’s a rotten shame that someone robbed her of the rest of that plan. Please tell me you’ll find the terrible person who did it.’

‘We intend to try very hard,’ Sarah said.

‘It’s what we do,’ Ollie said.

‘Then blessings on you,’ Marjorie said, and Ollie gave her his best Alfred E. Neuman gap-toothed smile. The two of them traded cards and she got up, getting ready to leave. Sarah, watching them smile and shake hands, reflected gloomily that interesting conversation and new friendships were all very well, but this one hadn’t moved them much closer to the answers she was after. But as Marjorie turned to say goodbye she remembered the question she’d written crosswise on the side of her list, and said, ‘One more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Did Angela ever mention anything to you about doing research, looking up things about Ed’s family, anything like that?’

‘Oh … yes, I meant to tell you about that. She found his father and grandfather – she tell you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, a couple of months ago she saw an item in the paper that got her all excited. She brought me the clipping to show me. Something about a burglary in which several guns were stolen, and the homeowner told a reporter, “I guess I should have noticed those stones lined up in my driveway. But I’m making all the gowns for my daughter’s wedding; it’s a big job and I’ve been so fixated on it that I sort of blurred out everything else.”’

Stones. My God.

‘Angela said she bet that was Joey’s work. She remembered while she was still married she was out with Ed one day when he said he needed to stop at Chico’s house for a minute – something he needed to ask him. She stayed in the car while he went in and talked to Chico, and Joey was there outside the house, in the backyard with one of his friends. Not knowing she was sitting there at the curb, a few feet away, he was boasting about how much money he’d just made selling handguns. The other man asked him, “How much did you pay for them?” and Joey kind of hummed a certain way and they both laughed. But the friend said, “Joey, be careful, man, you get caught stealing guns you’ll go away a long time.” And the way Angela remembered it, Joey told his friend he was never going to get caught on a home invasion because he had this trick he did with river stones, the kind everybody’s got in the yard. He said he lined up four or five on the front sidewalk of houses he thought looked empty, and if nobody moved them out of the way after a couple of days he knew for sure the occupant was away from home.

‘I told her, “Angela, you better leave the investigating to the cops. Nobody’s found the money yet, so there could be a killer out there.”’ Marjorie turned on Sarah the tough, measuring look she normally used for gently used blouses. ‘You think maybe she found something?’

‘Maybe. This is just me, now, don’t quote me. Wouldn’t she tell you if she did?’

‘Probably. Unless she thought it was too dangerous for me to know.’

For the hell of it, and because she had seen Marjorie’s name on Delaney’s list of suspects, she took her car information. Marjorie’s Chevrolet was eight years old and she’d owned it for six. She gave Sarah all her information willingly, saying she was glad to see them checking everything.

‘Don’t give up,’ Marjorie said.

‘Never fear,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re just getting started,’

Sarah’s mood brightened considerably when she learned that prescription medicine had worked its promised magic – if two long, frustrating days could be described as magical. Tracy Scott had stopped coughing and been allowed to return to work. He came in carrying a note on his doctor’s prescription pad, like a grade-schooler’s note from his mother.

In his usual spot behind the file cabinet, she found him tapping away on the laptop, which was now properly signed out to him. He looked up briefly and said, ‘Be patient. It’s a jungle in here.’

Sarah said, ‘If you succeed in finding it you’ll have a whole department calling you a miracle worker. The rest of us, the harder we work on this case, the deeper we dig the hole.’

Tracy said, ‘I can commiserate or be brilliant – which do you want?’

‘Never mind,’ she said coldly. ‘If you want me, you can come and find me.’

But Ray found her first. He was striding off the elevator with a smile that lit the whole second floor. ‘I got the skinny on the gun, kid,’ he said. ‘Let’s go find all the guys.’

Jason and Oscar were off the floor, but the others clustered around him, hot for good news, or at least a break in the routine.

‘Banjo did his job, back then, when the suicide investigation was going on. Harry just neglected to add it to the report. What ailed that guy, anyway?’

‘Short-timer sickness,’ Leo said. ‘What about the gun?’

‘Banjo sent the number to the manufacturer, got back the report. The 22A Sport Series Smith & Wesson was sold to a dealer in Cincinnati. It was purchased there, during a summer vacation trip, by Tucson citizen Lincoln C. Barnhardt. He went to see his dear old mother and bought the pistol while he was there, because, he says, it’s a well-known fact that these bigger cities farther east have better buys. Yessir. The best weapons at the lowest prices. How’s that for generalizing freely?’

‘Come on, Ray, he brought the .22 home and then what?

‘His house was burgled that November. He had quite a nice little collection of firearms in a locked case. Case was shattered and the guns were gone.’

‘Banjo did the search that ID’d the weapon?’

‘Yes. Had all the information right there in his files, but Harry never put it in the case file.’

‘OK,’ Leo said. ‘So now all we need to do is answer the big question. What the devil was Frank Martin doing with a stolen gun?’

‘Maybe he never did anything with it,’ Sarah said. ‘Maybe that was somebody else.’

‘I know you want to believe that,’ Leo said, ‘but let’s stick with what we can prove today. Where did Jason go?’

‘He was fussing about how to find out who got Frank’s car, and I suggested he ask Chico. He’s friendlier than Cecelia or Pilar, and he would surely remember the negotiations.’

‘Which must have been a pip,’ Leo said.

‘Aren’t you glad you weren’t there? And since Oscar had about decided to talk to Chico about the famous farewell note, they went off together to Chico’s house. Listen, Leo, I need to tell you what I just heard from Marjorie Springer.’

‘Which of course I want to hear. May I just answer my phone first?’

‘Of course. When did a mere detective ever take precedence over a telephone?’ She walked toward her workspace, deciding to type up the interview with Marjorie while the facts were fresh. Not that it was probably as important as it had seemed when she first heard it, she thought, unloading her gear. The more she thought about it, every little lock-picking sap in town probably used the river stone trick sooner or later. Besides, her own phone was ringing.

‘Detective,’ the bells in Teresa García’s voice seemed a little muted today, ‘I hope I have not called at a bad time?’

‘Not at all,’ Sarah said, stifling the little buzz in her brain saying
not now
,
not now
. ‘You must call me whenever you have something to say.’

‘Well … I have just spoken to my daughter, Cecelia, and’ – she cleared her throat, an anxious sound – ‘she has spoken to Joey, I guess, by phone, and she urged me to consider that he is suffering very much in that jail.’

‘Believe me, Teresa, he may be discontented but he’s not suffering. He’s in one of the safest places he’s ever been in, well fed and cared for.’

‘I know. And I told her what you said, that he is safer there till you find the money. But she said, “They’ve had three years to find the money and they haven’t done it. Joey can’t sit in jail till they do.” She is determined to mobilize the family, to pool our resources and get Joey out of jail so we can … um … plan his defense.’

‘Has she hired a lawyer?’

‘No. She wants me to do that. She keeps insisting it isn’t right that we’ve turned our backs on one of our own. She asked me, “If it was you in there, how would you feel if nobody came to help you?”’

‘But you’re not robbing houses, are you?’

‘No. She can’t seem to see the difference. I know this isn’t your problem, but I’m so distressed I felt I had to talk to you.’

‘You were quite right too. Teresa, all I can say is that I believe we’re close and I hope you can persuade Cecelia to be patient a little longer.’

And I’m going to see if I can get the bail set higher
.

She had just put down the phone when Leo’s voice boomed along the aisle, ‘Sarah Burke over there someplace?’

She poked her head out and yelled, ‘What?’

‘Come back, Jason’s got something.’

He was messing with phone buttons, transferring a cell phone call to his landline and then activating the speaker phone. ‘Now,’ he said as she walked in, ‘say it again so Sarah can hear.’

Jason’s voice sounded tinny through the old speakers. ‘Oscar and I are in Chico’s yard. We asked Chico who got Frank’s car, and Chico says Joey got it.’

Sarah leaned toward the phone and said, ‘Jason, does Chico know where the vehicle is now?’

‘You’re not gonna believe this,’ Jason said and broke up. Laughing so hard he became unintelligible, he choked out, ‘He keeps it—’ and dissolved into whoops of laughter that turned into coughing.

‘Jason, stop, I can’t understand you,’ Leo yelled, gritting his teeth.

‘Wait—’ Leo and Sarah stared impatiently at the ceiling, while sounds of coughing and then strangled choking crackled out of the phone. After what felt like a long minute Jason came back on, quiet and sober, saying, ‘I’m sorry, but it struck me funny so I laughed … and I guess I caused a dust storm in this yard. Hoo. Not gonna do
that
again.’

‘OK. What was funny?’

‘We’re all standing around the station with worried frowns saying, “Where in the world is Frank Martin’s old auto?” and all the time the damn car’s right here in Chico’s yard.’