A Fair to Die For (26 page)

“Ones I’ve noticed or received are small,” Carrie said.

“That’s what I thought. Well now, all this activity picked up speed about the middle of August, and has stayed steady ever since. And, here’s something that will be of special interest to you since Shirley mentioned you hearing a woman’s voice. Over the last week or so I’ve seen a woman come out from that small door several times. Looked like she came out to talk with people who’d just driven in. After a few minutes the big door there would open and they’d drive inside, the women walking in behind them, then the door would go closed. I never saw her before last week, though she could have been in and out before then, and I missed it. But for sure she wasn’t around as much as she is now.”

“What’s she look like?” Shirley asked.

“Oh, well, let’s see. Dark, straight hair, cut short, almost manish. Hard to tell from this distance, but my guess is she’s around forty-five and good looking. She’s skinny except for big bazooms. Kind of tall, maybe five foot eight or nine.”

“What time of day have you seen her?” Carrie asked. “Or does it vary?”

“Varies. I think she’s been there most all the time since I first noticed her. I never saw her drive off, so I figure there must be a living space inside that smaller building. I haven’t smelled food cooking, but, who knows, she may live on microwaved dinners. Or the wind could have been a direction to take the smells away.”

“What does she wear?” Shirley asked.

“Oh, just jeans and a shirt that looks like a man’s dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I bet she wouldn’t wear a polo or t-shirt any more’n I would. There are those bazooms.” Jo laughed. “A shirt suits her better. She never has on anything like a mechanic’s overalls, if that’s what you’re thinking about.”

“Not really, just tryin’ to get a picture. I guess you’ve never seen her dressed up—you know, like going to church or out to dinner?”

“No, but I could have missed something like that.”

“What do you remember seeing during the late morning and early afternoon yesterday? Was she around then?”

“I didn’t spend much time on the porch yesterday, Shirley, and I’m sorry, because I know what you’re getting at. Did I observe anything around the time you think Carrie was there? No. I was inside, working in the kitchen and tending to laundry. Ben was working in the pastures, except for having lunch.”

Carrie asked, “What about the four men you mentioned? When you see them, what are they doing?”

“Before the woman showed up, they talked to those that came, and directed them inside like she’s doing now. But they didn’t hang around all the time like she is.” Jo laughed again. “After all, someone has to do the grocery shopping, even for TV dinners, right? Maybe she has them go shopping for her. It’s almost like she’s hiding out here.”

“What about nighttime? Is anyone around then?”

“We aren’t on the porch after dark this time of year, but if our lights are out and I’m near the front windows upstairs, like when I’m going to bed, I’ve noticed light over there, and, one or two times, headlights coming or going.”

“If you don’t mind,” Carrie said, “could we go sit on the porch? I’d like to look the place over more carefully “

Shirley shook her head. “Uhh, I don’t know about that. Might not be safe for you.”

“There’s still some spotty cover from the trees, especially at the north end,” Jo said, “and they never pay any attention to us anyway. I took over a box of cookies right after they moved in, partly because I was curious to see what was inside those buildings. No one was outside, so I knocked on the small door. One of the men came, and I told him I wanted to welcome them to the neighborhood, which, of course, was baloney, more-or-less. The man did act real glad to get the cookies, and he thanked me, but he sure didn’t invite me in, and I haven’t gotten so much as a wave from any of them since. Anyway, I think it will be okay to sit there, since guests during the day often sit outside with me in pleasant weather like today. I insist on bringing out some coffee, though, unless y’all want sweet tea.”

Both Carrie and Shirley accepted the offer of coffee, and Jo told them to go on out while she got a tray ready to bring.

When the three of them were settled, Carrie asked, “Since guests do sit with you on the porch, and the truck people are used to that, how about the possibility of someone official—say a deputy sheriff—coming here to observe? Sounds as if they could drive a plain vehicle, wear plain clothing, and sit here without it looking suspicious.”

“I think that would work fine,” Jo said, “but of course I’d have to tell Ben about it then.”

“I understand. Can he be trusted to keep this quiet for a while? No talking to anyone?”

“If he knows the possible consequences to you, or even to Shirley and Roger if he blabs, you bet he can,” Jo said, and I think . . . oh, look! There’s the woman and one of the men I’ve seen before. Just came out of the small door.”

Carrie said, “Shirley, you keep talking and looking at Jo, any kind of conversation you can think of. Jo and I can glance toward the buildings. We can’t stare, but I want to see those two in case I might recognize anything about either of them. I sure wish we could hear their voices.”

“Way too far for that,” Shirley said, “and they can’t hear me, either, so I’ll tell Jo about the time Henry planned a camping trip to the Buffalo National River as a surprise for you, and . . .”

Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE OBJECT OF A SEARCH

When he walked into the house Henry smelled . . . cinnamon rolls?

He found Olinda and Edie in the kitchen reading the newspaper.

“What smells so good?”

Olinda said, “I’ve never made a pie from scratch, and Edie hasn’t for years, so, since we had plenty of time, we decided to make one. Your
Grass Valley Bistro Cookbook
doesn’t include anything as ordinary as a simple piecrust recipe, but I found instructions online. You didn’t have all the stuff called for here in the house, but you had the basics. We substituted the rest, like using margarine instead of shortening and salt. We took the two apples you had in the refrigerator and a can of peaches for our two-crust apple-peach pie.” She looked at her watch. “Done in about thirty minutes if our calculations are right.”

“Sounds and smells good. I look forward to it.”

Edie said, “Things go okay with the police chief? You were gone quite a while.”

“Oh. Well, I waited for him to be free. Nice guy. Concerned about Carrie, of course. I guess there’s no news or you’d have called.”

“No news,” Olinda told him. “Sorry. Now it looks like we’ll all be here at least another day. That means I need to go out to a grocery store, if you’ll loan me your car. I hate to leave you and Edie here alone, but it can’t be helped. You know enough to stay inside with the doors locked.”

“Edie and I will be okay. No hanky-panky.” He attempted a chuckle, and it came out sounding more like the attempt to conceal a burp.

Olinda seemed not to notice. “Well, I was thinking of the safety issue, but, okay, we’ll get a list together after lunch. I’ll report to the sheriff about where I’m going and why. Overall, it should take me about an hour. Meanwhile, what about lunch?”

We have canned soup, and your pie. There’s also lunch meat for sandwiches.”

“Out of bread,” she said.

“Oh. Well, we can cut the lunch meat into squares and have it on crackers with our soup.”

“How about making that tomato soup you made the day I came?” Edie asked.

When they cut the pie, Olinda looked at it in dismay. “It’s soupy,” she said, and the bottom crust didn’t really cook. What’s wrong?”

Edie stared into the pie pan. “Probably should cool more, but I also forgot about mixing flour or tapioca into the fruit to thicken the juice.”

“Never mind,” Henry said. “I’ll wash our soup bowls, we can spoon the filling into them, and break pieces of the top crust over the fruit and juice. Anyone for vanilla ice cream?”

As soon as Olinda left for the grocery store, Henry stopped cleaning the soup kettle and said, “We need to talk. Come in the living room. We can finish this later.”

Looking wary, she joined him, saying nothing.

As soon as they were seated, he said, “Edie, it’s time for the truth. You must have some idea about why our guestroom and your belongings were searched during the time Carrie and her abductors were in this house.”

She picked at a piece of dried dough on her jeans and remained silent.

“I am not playing games with you. What do you—or did you—have that someone wants so badly they took my wife captive, used her keys to gain access to this house, and searched your belongings? That must have been the reason they abducted her, and I’m sure that’s the reason those two men came here asking for you in the first place. You tell me why right now.”

He knew his voice was rising, but didn’t bother to control it, or the anger he was intentionally, but very easily, displaying. “What do they want? How did they know where you were, or that you were coming here?”

Edie looked up at him. There was no emotion visible on her face as she said, “I don’t know.”

He stood. “I’m ready to turn you over to the sheriff and tell them you’re connected to drug trafficking in this part of Arkansas. You’ll have to prove your innocence, and that may take some time, since I can give a lot of circumstantial evidence against you. My word against yours. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

She raised both her hands, palms slanted out. “I’m not lying. I don’t blame you for thinking I am, but I really have no idea what they were looking for or how they knew I was coming here. You know as well as I that leaks as far back as DC are possible. My mother knew I was coming, and I didn’t tell her to keep my planned visit to Oklahoma and Arkansas a secret. She has lots of friends, and there’s a woman checking in on her every day while I’m gone, though, as far as Mother is concerned, this is a vacation and an effort to connect with a long-lost cousin. She knows nothing about my confidential work for the DEA, and I didn’t tell her I was going to try and learn what happened to Daddy.”

Henry snorted in disgust and turned toward the phone.

“Do you want me to make up something just to appease you? If I knew anything, I’d . . . oh, wait. Maybe I do have an idea. Maybe I can guess.”

He turned back toward her, but remained standing. “All right, guess.”

“I don’t know anything about the drug traffickers Daddy worked with, except, of course, for Milton Sales, who was undercover with him as you know. The only thing I am sure of is that those men were evil. But Milton told me something more.

“He said Daddy was collecting damning evidence against the men he worked with as a form of insurance if they ever turned against him. He was writing things down, and planned to put his information in a safe-deposit box or some other secure place.” She stopped talking, and looked at the floor.

“And?” Henry prodded.

“Well, Milton says he has no idea what the evidence could have been. He wasn’t far enough into the organization yet to hear many details. I guess he was still sort of on probation with both the DAC Bureau and the gang selling drugs to truckers. He wasn’t even sure Daddy trusted him, since he never let him see what was on any of the papers.”

“Edie, how long have you known about those papers?”

“Milton mentioned them in our conversation on the bridge at War Eagle.”

“And, just now, when you continued to insist you had no clue why your belongings had been searched, it didn’t occur to you that those papers might have been a reason? I find that hard to believe.”

“Okay, don’t believe me, but I honestly thought the matter of the papers was a dead issue. I didn’t connect what Milton told me with present-day events. Even while Milton was telling me about them I assumed they were destroyed when Daddy was killed. It never occurred to me they might still be in existence, or that they could be important to someone today.”

“Did Milton say any more about the papers that you ‘just might remember’ now?”

“He did tell me they were in an old black leather portfolio. Milton doesn’t think Daddy had time to put them someplace safe before he was killed, since their existence in a safe place was supposed to be a kind of insurance against that very thing. He said the bad guys must have found them and destroyed them when . . . when they killed Daddy.”

“And you say, until now, you had no idea they existed?”

“Mother and I found a safe-deposit box key in Daddy’s things, but all that was in the box were passports, family papers, the deed to our house, my birth certificate, some other records. All very innocent.”

Henry stood there in silence, thinking over what she’d been saying, and trying to decide if he believed she could be so naïve. Finally he said, “There may be copies of those papers somewhere. It seems obvious that at least two or three people believe they exist, either as originals or copies.”

“After all these years? And, why would they matter now anyway? Probably people mentioned in the papers are dead. The mortality rate in that business is high, and anyway, people Daddy’s age would all be gone by now. Some probably died in prison.”

“Milton Sales is certainly still alive and active.”

“He was only in his early twenties back then.”

“Edie,
use your head.
He wouldn’t have been the only one in that age group. And some of the older folks would have had families like your Dad did. Their children could be interested in destroying papers proving their parents were involved in crimes. It’s also likely some of the children are carrying on the family business tradition, and therefore wouldn’t balk at criminal activity to retrieve damning papers about their relatives.”

“Well, I guess that’s possible. But it’s a lot of trouble to go to for old papers that, so far as we know, either don’t exist, or, if they do, don’t contain information anyone cares about today. Maybe Milton is all wrong about the papers.”

“Maybe he’s lying?”

“But what would his point be?” She returned to picking at the spot of dough.