Death of a Garage Sale Newbie (23 page)

Suzanne felt suddenly light-headed. “You know what? I really need to sit down.”

“Oh, oh, sorry.” The man moved toward her and pulled his chair out from around the other side of the desk. “Please forgive my inconsideration.” He placed the file on the desks. “Can I get you anything? Glass of water?”

Suzanne lowered herself into the chair. “I just need to sit down. Those stairs took a lot out of me. What is your name anyway?”

“Todd Enger.”

“Well, Todd, I’m Suzanne Thomas. I appreciate your helping me with this.”

“It’s my job.” He fanned out the files. “Each file has a month of meetings. There is an agenda at the beginning of each meeting, so you know what was covered.”

She grabbed two of the files, and he worked his way through the other set of three.

After a few minutes of reading, he said, “Here it is.” He flipped through the file. “Looks like it was on the agenda for three meetings. At one point David McQuire testified that the mall property might have archaeological significance based on what he had found on some trees on the site. The city commission voted three to two to let the development go through. And you’re right. Mr. Jackson was the owner and developer of the land.”

Suzanne grabbed a piece of notebook paper out of her purse. “A three to two vote?”

“There are five commissioners. In order for the city to approve a subdivision or even someone adding on to their garage in a way that goes against city standards, at least three commissioners have to vote yes. Some of it is routine, just a matter of jumping through the right hoops, and some of it is very controversial.”

Suzanne leaned forward in her chair. She was having a hard time getting a deep breath. “So maybe I should write down the names of the city commissioners.”

“Sure.” He flipped through the pages again. “I’ll read them to you.” He glanced up at her. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look really pale.”

She poised her pen over the notebook page. “I just need a nap. Give me the names,” she panted.

“In 1986, the commissioners were Jennifer Mack-Olsen, Jeffrey Stenengarter—”

“Stenengarter. What a weird name.” She leaned toward Todd to check the spelling. Her stomach muscles tightened.

“The Stenengarter family has been in Montana politics forever.” Todd continued to read. “Elias Holms, Keith Wheeler—”

“Wheeler really? As in Jackson-Wheeler Real Estate?”

Todd shrugged. “Could be.”

Suzanne wrote down the name. Her hands were moist. Ginger could figure out what the connection was. “And the last guy?”

Todd chuckled “You are going to love this. The last city commissioner is named Joe Smith.”

Suzanne finished writing and looked up. “Todd, you have been very helpful. Could you do one more thing for me?”

“Sure, Mrs. Thomas. What is it?”

“Could you call an ambulance? I think I am having my baby right now.”

“
There it is
, Lewis Hall.” Arleta pointed to a two-story boxy building masked by the taller surrounding structures.

“I didn’t know this even existed.” Kindra peeked around the trunk of a large oak. “Do they hold classes here?”

Walking across campus with Arleta was like having a private tour guide. The sky had turned a dusky gray by the time Arleta had given Kindra a history of almost every building on campus along with personal stories.

Outside of Lewis Hall, Arleta gazed up at the tall trees. “I didn’t go back and get the key from Professor Chambers to show you the classrooms.” A subtle smile enhanced the brightness of her features.

They walked arm in arm down the stone walkway. The canopy of trees made things even darker. Branches creaked and flapped in the wind. Leaves shook like cheerleaders’ pom-poms. An image from a children’s book flashed through Kindra’s head. Hansel and Gretel being lured to the witch’s house with the enticement of candy. What a weird thing to think about.

“Do you think Professor Chambers was right about David getting a written confession from one of the city commissioners?” Kindra asked.

“I just can’t believe David kept it from me. For the last five years of his life, it seemed like the wind went out of his sail, like he lost his passion for his work. I just thought it was because he was close to retirement.”

They walked up the wide stairs. The building looked like a house that had been converted to a lecture hall. The only distinct exterior feature was two large bay windows on either side of the stairs.

“The confession sure isn’t with anything Ginger has. She went all through that photo album and vest, and it obviously wasn’t in that shell box.”

“Maybe that’s why they were looking in my house.” Arleta put the key in the keyhole. “Maybe they thought Ginger had given it back to me after they searched her house and couldn’t find it.” Arleta pushed the door open.

The entryway featured mosaic tile that led to a spiral staircase done in a dark wood. Kindra’s nose wrinkled at the dusty smell. On the main floor were doors, two on each side. Probably classrooms.

The huge chandelier hanging from the eighteen-foot ceiling caught Kindra’s attention. Their footsteps echoed on the floor.

“This was one of the first buildings constructed when the college was established at the turn of the century. I think it was a residence before that. When David first got his teaching appointment, his office was upstairs. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Arleta swept up the stairs. Kindra followed. Would she forever be racing breathlessly up stairs chasing the athletic older woman? Arleta reached the top and disappeared around a corner.

Kindra looked down at the empty entryway before following. They’d left the door slightly open. A slim sliver of light cast a geometric shadow on the floor below.

Arleta had gone into a room that was piled high with boxes, which she had already started to move. A patina of dust on the floor suggested that the room hadn’t been used in a while.

“We were like schoolkids when we were first married.” Arleta set an opened box on the floor.

Kindra peered into the box. Sweatshirts with the college logo, of all things. The next box contained a stack of papers. Kindra picked a paper off the top. Three stapled pages for English 221, spring semester 1985. She read the name at the top. “I wonder if Kevin Gage wonders why he never got his paper back. He got a B-plus.”

“Here it is.” Arleta’s voice skipped up half an octave. In the wall, the words
David loves Arleta
were carved. “How junior high, huh?”

“I think it’s neat. You guys loved each other enough to be so silly.”

Arleta laced her fingers together and gazed at the ceiling. “Kindra, this trip across campus has been therapeutic for me.” She stood up straight. “Meeting you and Ginger and Suzanne has been good for me.”

“Glad we could be of help. You must miss David very much.”

“Less each day.” Arleta raised a fist in the air. “I am back in the land of the living.”

“How did he die?”

Arleta got a faraway look in her eyes, as if a scene were playing out before her. “He was killed in a car accident.”

Downstairs, the door slammed shut. Heavy footsteps pounded across tile and up the stairs. Some sort of physiological security system activated an instinctual tightening in Kindra’s rib cage. It was too late in the day for classes. “Who could be—?”

Ginger pushed her fourth latte aside and rested her head on the table. Who was she kidding? No amount of caffeine was going to give her the fortitude to pay full price for anything. She’d just have to tell Earl she couldn’t do it. Maybe there was some other way she could start her life of adventure, something easier, like nailing oatmeal to the wall.

Shoulders drooping, Ginger gathered up her purse and trudged through the mall. On a whim, she stopped at a phone booth and looked up Keaton Lustrum’s phone number. It surprised her that it was listed. She wrote down the number. If Renata was the weak link, maybe she could call and hope the woman answered.

Outside, the sky had turned gray. The mall parking lot was nearly empty. As she walked to her car, Ginger pulled her phone out of her purse and glanced at the number she had written down.

“Hey, I remember you.”

Beside her car was a truck that said
The Housewife’s Helper
on the side. A man and a woman in matching blue and red checked shorts stood with their arms around each other. It wasn’t their faces that triggered Ginger’s memory. The truck, with its reference to a business, was what she connected with that day shortly after Mary Margret’s death.

“Frank and Beth?” asked Ginger. Bobbleheads and a Mickey Mouse fishing pole.

“Hey, you remembered. I’m glad we ran into you.” Frank stepped forward. He still had a full head of black hair and the farmer’s tan, but something was different. Maybe he had lost weight.

Beth sidled up beside her husband and grabbed Ginger’s hand. “We owe you such an apology for the way we acted that day in front of you and your friend.” Her appearance had changed, too. Had they both been on a fitness kick or something?

Frank wrapped his arm around his wife’s waist. “That day was a turning point for us. We were fighting about stuff all the time, for most of our marriage.” He leaned closer to Ginger as though sharing a confidence. “I got rid of all my deer antlers.”

“We did mean things to each other with stuff. Frank would buy an expensive piece of electronics without talking to me, so I would go out and buy a pair of three-hundred-dollar shoes just to get even.” Still shaking Ginger’s hand, Beth leaned a little closer. “When I threw his bobbleheads out, I was trying to hurt him. Very passive-aggressive.”

While Frank and Beth plowed through a dialogue that belonged on
Dr. Phil,
Ginger tried to grasp the concept of paying three hundred dollars for a pair of shoes.

“It was all this private little war, until that day you and your friend saw how ugly we had become to each other.” Frank leaned against the tailgate of his truck. “You do things in private, but when someone else sees it…”

Beth finally let go of Ginger’s hand. “Now we talk about purchases and agree on what we’ll buy. We’re a team.”

“It’s all just stuff anyway.” Frank held up his hands for emphasis. “My wife is more important.”

“We decluttered our lives like we’ve been trying to do for years.” Beth smiled.

Frank grinned and nodded, looking a great deal like the bobbleheads he’d recently parted with.

That was what was different. Her memory of them that day was of two people with tight fists and tight faces. None of that tension was in their expressions or body language.

“Matter of fact.” Frank leaned into the truck bed and grabbed something from underneath a tarp. “We got a load ready to take to the dump. I don’t need this fishing pole anymore. It hasn’t worked right since I took it back anyway. The line keeps jamming, never used to do that.” Frank placed the pole into Ginger’s hand. “Beth said your friend bought it for her grandson. I hope he gets some use out of it.”

Ginger’s lips parted, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

Beth and Frank got into his truck. Frank rolled down the window as they drove past Ginger. “Thanks for everything.”

After a long moment of still trying to fathom how anyone could pay three hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, Ginger closed her mouth and shook her head.

She pressed in Keaton’s phone number on her cell.
Please let Renata answer, please.
The phone rang three times.

“Allo.”

Ginger’s heart jumped. “Is this Renata?”

Long silence. “Yes.”

“Don’t hang up. This is Ginger. You were at my house yesterday.”

“Keaton would not want me to talk to you.”

Ginger bit her lip. She needed to choose her words carefully. “But you want to talk to me. You’re not happy with Keaton.”

“I am object to him. Like his Lexus or his vacation condo. Now he want me to go back to France so he can get a new object.”

“Did you…did you see my friend Mary Margret?”

Renata took in a deep breath. “Keaton said I break the law. He said I would get in trouble and be sent back to France. So I am silent. I am not dumb. I see that he is thinking of sending me back to France anyway. So I make him do the same. We are even. I break and enter. He break and enter.”

“My friend, what happened with my friend?” She had tried to purge her voice of any impatience.

Again, there was a long pause. “You want to know. I tell you. I want Keaton to hurt, like he hurt me. I have Mary Margret’s card, right?”

Ginger tapped her fist on the trunk. “Right.”

“I go to Mary Margret’s house to get the box. She race out in her blue car with a man. Keaton put much pressure on me to get the box back so I follow, thinking I will ask her. They drive long time. At first, they get out of the car, he push her around, I see she is in danger so I follow to help. They go to his fancy house in the forest. I break and enter to help her. I hide. They did not see me. She escape in her car. He follow in his. I call Keaton. He say, ‘Get out, get out, you break the law.’ He is worried not about me, but his reputation.”

Ginger couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Renata, could you identify the man if you saw him?”

“Maybe. I see him only short time. He big. Big belt buckle. Big cowboy hat.”

That was half the men in Three Horses. “How about the house—could you identify the house?”

“Will this hurt Keaton? You know, he has been giving friend at DMV money for silence about the motorbikes.”

Ginger rolled her eyes. Keaton thought everyone could be bought. Unfortunately, most people could be. “We will find a way to make all of this hurt him.”

“The house was up winding roads and dark, but I think I could find it.”

Ginger picked up the fishing pole Frank had given her and fiddled with it. “I’m at the mall right now, Renata. Can you get here and take me to the house?”

“
Bon,
my sister come with me.”

The reel on the fishing pole rattled. “I will be waiting in the corner by the car wash, sitting on my car trunk. It’s an older Pontiac.”

“I be there.”

Ginger hung up. She sat on the trunk of her car while the sky grew darker and the last few cars pulled out of the front lot. She had to tell somebody the news.

She leaned the pole against the bumper of her car and checked her cell phone. Still no message from Suzanne. She tried Kindra’s cell. Nothing. No one was answering at Arleta’s either. Hmmm. The law of averages dictated she should be able to reach at least one of them. She hopped off the trunk.

With the phone still in her hand and her purse strap resting in the crook of her elbow, she lifted the fishing pole to put it in the trunk. The reel was really loose. She shook it. Maybe that was why it hadn’t worked for Frank. She set her purse and phone on the trunk. It probably just screwed back on. She twisted it. The reel fell into two parts in her hand. Earl would be on her case for that one. She couldn’t even remember the lefty loosy, righty tighty rule.

When she stared inside the reel, a piece of paper slightly larger than a postage stamp was wedged around the spool of fishing line. She maneuvered it out. New creases in the older brittle paper made it fragile. Once she’d unfolded it, her eyes went to the signature at the bottom: Joe Smith. That had to be a made-up name. The date at the top read June 15, 1991.