Suspects (16 page)

“I am Mrs. Keller.”

“Yes, Miz Keller. We talked the other day, if you recall.”

But she did not seem to, and she said, “How do you do?”

“Miz Keller, did you see this panel truck Mr. Keller is telling us about? The one that maybe was backing out of the Howlands' driveway?”

She smiled sweetly. “Not really.”

Moody said, “Well—”

Mrs. Keller was not finished. “I only saw it when it was heading away, toward the village.”

“Village?” asked LeBeau.

Keller smiled down benignly on his wife. “She uses the old word. When her mom and dad first moved here, West View was an independent village. She means where the shops are.”

“The few that are left,” the woman said.

Moody asked if she had seen enough of the truck to describe it. He had a hunch the woman would display more precision of mind than her husband, and he was right.

“It was a van, not a panel truck. It was dark blue.”

“Black,” Keller corrected, shifting from one foot to the other like a kid who has to pee.

“He's color-blind,” scoffed his little wife. “It was navy blue.”

“What lettering was on it, if any?” asked LeBeau.

“If there'd been any,” said Mrs. Keller in a saucy way, “I'd have told you without you asking.” Dennis was not having his usual success with a female. Moody was more on Mrs. K's wavelength. Perhaps age came into play.

“If you saw the van from the back,” Moody said, “you couldn't have seen the driver.”

The little woman nodded briskly. “That's true. But
he
did.”

Moody turned to Keller. “I thought you said you didn't see much of him.”

“That's right. Not much.”

“But
some?”
Moody asked him to describe what he saw of the person driving the van.

Keller winced in apparent despair, slowly shaking his head. “See,” he said at length, “I…”

“Just take your time, Mr. Keller. You'll remember a lot more than you might think if you're patient and let the scene return to your mind's eye, like they say.”

Keller raised his eyebrows. “That's not my problem,” he said brightly. “I don't know what name to call them. You're both writing this down, and it might come out sometime in court or in the media that I used the wrong name, and we might be picketed or worse.”

LeBeau was annoyed. “Just what do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, Gordie,” Mrs. Keller said to her husband. “Cut it out.” She addressed Moody. “What he means is the changing of the name, you know, from ‘colored' to ‘Negro' to ‘black' to ‘African-American.'”

Moody squinted at her husband. “This van was driven by a black guy?”

“You got it.”

LeBeau asked, “Real black or lighter-skinned?”

“I don't know about that.”

“You can't say what kind of color?”

“The window was up, and there was reflections on it.” The man suddenly glowered at Dennis. “I'm just lucky I seen anything at all.”

“What time we talking about?” asked LeBeau.

“Three or so, take or leave.”

“Could have been three-thirty?”

“Maybe.”

“Two-thirty?”

The question was near disdain, but Keller deliberated, head down, giving them a look at his scalp. “Couldn't have been two-thirty. Definitely after three.”

“Three forty-five?”

“I doubt it,” said Keller.

“What time would you say, ma'am?” Moody asked.

Mrs. Keller's lips were marked with those vertical lines some women get with age. She wore eye makeup and shadow, Moody recognized. She was late to arrive probably because she was getting fixed up. He found that touching. She might or might not have been pretty in her youth. She said, “Oh, Gordie's probably right about the time. He's better than me at that.”

“Definitely nothing written on the van?” LeBeau asked, and then added, “That you could see?”

“I coulda seen the writing if any,” Keller replied.

LeBeau drew the man to the trio of close-set front windows. “Help me out here, sir.” He chose the middle one. There was clear glass between the flouncy curtains. “Was this where you looked out?” He stood at the angle required to see the end of the Howland driveway and its junction with the street, now still banded with yellow police tape. No media vehicles were in evidence at the moment, which meant that the detectives' pedestrian approach had probably not been observed by any neighbors. Moody stood at the window on the right. When he stepped away, LeBeau took his place and Keller drew nearer to the middle window, bending slightly to bring his head below the place where the flounces flared away from each other.

Back with Mrs. Keller, Moody asked, “Did
you
hear any sounds from next door?”

She nodded decisively, but then said, “I couldn't really tell exactly where they were from, though.”

“Is that why you never mentioned them when we talked the first time?”

“That's exactly why,” said Mrs. Keller, smiling triumphantly behind her glasses. “I think you have to know what you're saying when you talk to the police, wouldn't you agree?”

“You can use a little leeway, though,” Moody told her. “We're trained to evaluate information. You shouldn't make up anything, but you really ought to tell every single detail you can remember.” At this, she acquired a spark in her eye, and Moody asked, “Is something coming back?”

“No,” Mrs. Keller said soberly. She left the room on the same route by which she had arrived.

Keller waited till she had gone, and then he said, in a lowered tone and a confidential manner, “She's got a little Alzheimer's, see. I didn't see a Negro driving the van. She just made that up. I couldn't see the driver at all. The truck window was tinted. She got out of the house couple weeks ago while I was in the bathroom. They found her down on Clare Street. She didn't have any idea where she was.”

“You've helped us,” Moody said. “Anything else comes to mind, you've got the number.”

LeBeau had continued to look out the window. He shouted now at Moody. “Look who it is!”

Moody lost no time in bursting out the front door and onto the steps. A dark-blue van was moving slowly, crawling, along Laurel Avenue. It stopped briefly, red lights igniting, in front of the Howland residence, then continued in the easterly direction, going toward what Mrs. Keller called the village. It was already too far away for Moody, at his perspective, to read the legend printed on its side in bold white letters, but he could easily identify what was printed on the back:
CONWAY
on the left-hand door;
PLUMBING
on the right.

Dennis had now joined him. “Let's catch the bastard.” They dashed for their car, which was pointed the wrong way and had to be turned in the nearest driveway.

“Lloyd? … Okay, stay asleep,” said the female voice. “I'm gonna go get cleaned up.”

He kept his eyes closed but had begun to remember where he was, and once that happened the wonderful feeling of well-being began quickly to be conditioned by other memories, not necessarily bad ones but very different in texture from the matter of sleep.

“All right.”

“You're awake? I wouldn't of bothered you, but it's been more than eight hours.”

He opened his eyes at last and saw that the curtain had been drawn back, to do which Molly had had to reach across him. He turned his head politely toward her, but she was not in the sleeping compartment. He had it all to himself, in fact was pressed against the rear wall. He squirmed to the forward edge and looked down.

Molly sat behind the wheel.

“Been there long?”

“I'm a lighter sleeper than yourself. It's been real noisy around here today. But I got a few hours…I was just thinking,” she said. “Maybe we could go see the movie over there tonight.”

“If you like.”

“All right, then. I'm going over the showers. Could you just hand me down that duffel bag? I'll put on a change of shirt and pants.”

He fetched the bag from where it was stowed, beyond his feet, and handed it down to her.

She pointed through the windshield. “Looks like the men's place is around that side. I never been here before. You never know what a bathroom's like till you try it.”

Lloyd swung his legs around and descended to the seat. “I'd better hit the road.”

Molly stared bleakly at the big steering wheel before her. “Why don't you hang around till tomorrow? What are you going to do now, anyway? It's almost six. Start out early tomorrow morning if you want. More likely to get rides then, aren't you?” She looked at him, her eyes large in reproach. “I thought you were staying.”

Lloyd was embarrassed by her appeal. “I just think it might be better.”

“Was it something I did or said?”

“It's nothing personal.”

“That's what's wrong with it,” Molly said quickly and began to step out the open door.

“Hey, don't be mad,” he said. “I mean, I really have to get started making something of myself.”

She shoved herself back onto the seat. “If you want to try trucking, finish this run with me, and we'll talk to my dad. We don't have enough work at this time to hire another driver, but maybe business will pick up soon and be too much for me to handle by myself. My dad will have some ideas. He knows lots of the other independents. But you might even want to get some training and then start out with one of the big lines as an apprentice, though you wouldn't want to stay with them long, I guarantee. You get some experience on the road, maybe you can drive for us later on. I'm not going to keep doing this when I have little kids.”

“Kids,” Lloyd repeated. “Yeah. I'll bet you'll be a good mother, too.”

“Thank you.” She was still staring at him. “How about it?”

He nodded. “I'll certainly consider it. It's just I was thinking of going on west, maybe all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

“When did you get that idea? While you were sleeping?” Her right eyebrow was arched. She shook her short hair. The red baseball cap was hanging on one of the gearshift levers. “You're just talking miles. There's other ways to get a fresh start that don't call for traveling, you know. Anyhow, wherever you go you'll be taking yourself along, right?”

Her grin made him wonder whether she was making fun of him, something he could not have tolerated had it been done by a man. But maybe she was simply being nice again. If so, he was touched. “All right,” he said levelly. “I'll stick around awhile, at least until you head back, and I will think about what you said. But only on the condition that whatever happens I'm making a list of what I owe you, and I'm going to pay it back as soon as I can.”

“That's your problem. Now, come on, if you're going to the showers. Because if you are, I'll lock up here. Go on ahead, if you want. I first got to go to a phone and call my dad.”

“You must be the best daughter in the world,” Lloyd said.

She inspected his face, as if to determine whether he was speaking in derision. “It's no strain on me. I guess he really wanted a boy, and I'm just trying to make it up to him.”

“How'd you know he wanted a boy?” Lloyd asked indignantly. “Did he tell you?”

“No!” Molly said. “He'd never do anything to hurt my feelings. I just figured it out. All the stuff he likes to do most, or liked to do before the accident—fishing and hunting and all, and going to football games—wouldn't it have been more fun to do them with a boy?”

“Maybe it's even more fun with a girl who cares so much about you she will do things to please you that she wouldn't otherwise consider. You might look at it that way.” He did not know where this wisdom, if it could be called such, came from. He was not accustomed to deliberating on the problems of others, because you could be reminded that way of how inconsequential your existence was to the rest of the world.

But Molly seemed to value it. “What a nice thing to say! You know, Lloyd, I really have a hard time trying to figure you out. You can say such nice things, but then you were just going to take off.”

He was more puzzled than she, however. “I don't see that the two matters have any connection.”

“See?” she asked, chuckling. “You're weird.” And then she quickly leaned across and kissed him on the cheek, so quickly she was out her door before he could react.

Moody and LeBeau had caught up with Marty Conway's van at the intersection of Laurel with Warren Avenue and, after identifying themselves, asked him to follow their car to Homicide, but only if he did not mind. Moody also asked for permission to ride as passenger in the van.

“What's the emergency?” Conway asked. “I was just on my way to see you, in fact.”

“Lucky we ran across one another, then,” Moody said. He took the little rights-card from the case that held his shield and picture ID. “Just let me read this. You have the right—”

“Hey!” Conway complained. “What is this? Are you charging me with something?
What?”

“Just to be on the safe side, Marty,” Moody said. “We want to ask you some questions, and we're just protecting all parties. You ought to thank us.”

The plumber made a cynical sound as Moody resumed the reading, but he said nothing more until the ritual was finished, then asked again, “What
is
this?” Conway seemed to be of average height, though as yet Moody had not seen him out of the driver's seat. His build was wiry, as was his sand-colored hair. He was one of those scrawny people who wear skin-tight knitted shirts with very short sleeves that show as much of their muscleless arms as possible. He was also a cigarette smoker, judging from the lingering odor in the van, though no pack was in evidence and the ashtray was closed.