“You’ll never find Alta’s death certificate, will you?”
“You’ll be leaving now, Mr. Elstrom,” Ellie Ball said.
“There is still the matter of my getting shot, Sheriff. How is your investigation of that coming?”
“We’re on the lookout.”
“Like Roy Lishkin was on the lookout?”
“We’re looking for anything that might suggest your wounds were not self-inflicted.”
“You know I didn’t shoot myself.” I turned to leave, slowly, so as not to excite the holes in my side, but one last fury had to get out. “What happened to the gun?”
Her eyes looked past me, at the purple that was Leo, but I had the feeling she wasn’t seeing him, either. Something had changed on her face.
“The gun?” she asked, in a flat voice. “Plinnit took test fires back to Chicago, to compare with what they extracted from Georgie Korozakis. We’ve kept the gun here.”
“I meant the gun that killed the gas station attendant.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It was never found?”
“I just told you: I don’t know what happened to that gun.”
“There’s no mention of it in Sheriff Lishkin’s notes. That’s odd.”
She tried a smile. “Take care, Mr. Elstrom.”
“What just happened?” Leo said, checking the rearview mirror for perhaps the tenth time. He’d not said a word until we were a solid mile from Ellie Ball’s office.
“Which part?”
“For openers, beating on her about the gun used in the gas station robbery. That it was never recovered is understandable. The killer would have taken it with him.”
“I think it’s resurfaced.”
“Where?”
“In my hand.”
He hit the brakes, skidding to a stop, and turned to look at me. “You think that was the same gun that killed that gas station guy?”
“Just a hunch. That little bag in the evidence envelope contained two spent rounds. They looked like the one Plinnit said was dug out of my side.”
“How many times have you examined a bullet?”
“None.”
“How many times have you even held a bullet?”
“You mean other than the two in the plastic bag, just a few minutes ago?”
“Don’t obfuscate.”
“That would be none, as well.”
“So much for your ballistic expertise.”
“It’s an intriguing possibility.”
“That the same gun did the gas station attendant, Koros, and you? Darlene Taylor was the shooter, all three times?”
“Why not?”
“Again I ask: She’s the one who shot you and then beat you up? That sixty-year-old woman?”
“Maybe she hired someone to shoot me.”
“Please, don’t tell me it could have been the handyman who occasionally came around to help with chores. Like, ‘Joe, today I want you to do some weeding, mend the screen door, shoot Dek Elstrom, and then beat him half to death’?”
“What’s the bigger question, Leo?”
He paused, thinking. It always drove him nuts when I saw something he missed.
“Is it real big?” he asked, watching my face carefully.
“Huge.”
“Damn it. I know it has to do with Alta Taylor,” he said, “because you pressed the sheriff so hard about her.” Finally, he scratched his cheek, a sure sign of surrender. “Shit, I don’t know.”
“One of the Taylor girls, either Darlene or Rosemary, always made sure to be home with Alta.”
“Ellie Ball made a point of that.”
“Alta couldn’t be left home alone.”
Leo’s pale face darkened with what I hoped was embarrassment. “Roy Lishkin interviewed three people who saw both Darlene and Rosemary out driving with Georgie Korozakis that day. Both girls shouldn’t have been out driving. One of them was supposed to be home with Alta.”
“Bingo.”
“Unless Alta was in the car that day,” he said fast, so I couldn’t.
“Bingo.”
“But nobody saw Alta. And why was that, the uncharacteristically slowed but inevitably brilliant Brumsky asks? Because they kept her down, in the backseat of that car. And why was that, the brilliant Brumsky considers, at warp speed? Because she was the shooter,” he yelled, “and the two girls figured that if no one could place her at the scene, she’d never get charged.”
I nodded, because saying “Bingo” again would have been superfluous.
CHAPTER 51.
“Isn’t it a little early for indigestion?” I said. Leo had slowed, approaching the Would You?
“It’s almost eleven o’clock, it’s the only restaurant in town, and we need sustenance for our journey back to Rivertown.”
By now we were creeping forward at five miles an hour.
“Look at that couple enjoying their chicken baskets,” he said. “They’re in their late seventies, at least. Do they look indigested?”
They didn’t, but they did look like something else: history.
“Turn in,” I said.
Leo swung a fast right into the parking lot, slammed on the brakes, and was scuttling to the order window before I could change my mind. I eased out and hobbled over to the couple.
“Arthritis?” the woman asked, noticing the gingerly way I’d walked up.
“Hunting,” I said. “You folks live here long?”
“Seventy-four years for me, seventy-five for Clarence.”
“Seventy-four for me, same as you,” Clarence corrected. “I’m only three months older.”
“I was rounding,” she said.
“Both of you would remember the Taylor girls, then,” I said.
“Darlene and Rosemary, real lookers,” Clarence said.
“Why would you want to know about them?” the wife asked.
“An insurance policy was taken out on the three of them, when they were children.”
“Three of them?” the husband asked, looking confused.
“Alta, Clarence. Remember, there was Alta.”
He nodded. “The one that never came to town.”
“Darlene’s still around,” the wife said. “You can talk to her direct. Rosemary, though, took off when she was still in high school.”
“So I was told,” I said. “Following some trouble at a gas station, or something.”
“Nothing to do with those girls,” Clarence said.
“A killing,” his wife said to me. “Folks saw them nearby.”
“There was a boy with them,” Clarence said.
“Folks wondered if the sheriff thought the three were involved,” the woman said.
“Baloney,” said Clarence.
“Darlene and Rosemary were real nice girls,” said the wife.
“That boy left the summer after the incident,” Clarence said. “What the hell was his name?”
“He didn’t wait until summer, Clarence. He left just a few days afterward.”
“What the hell was his name?” the old man repeated.
“Georgie Korozakis,” his wife said. “He was sweet on the older girl, Darlene.”
“Did you think the Taylor girls were involved?” I asked.
“Only busybodies thought that. Nobody with a brain,” Clarence said.
“How about Sheriff Lishkin?”
“He didn’t, either,” Clarence said.
“You go ask Ellie about that,” his wife said to him. “You go ask her how he spent every day that summer.”
“Ellie Ball, the sheriff?” I asked.
“Ellie Bell, Roy Lishkin’s granddaughter,” Clarence said. He looked at his wife. “I’ll bet she’ll say Roy never believed those girls had anything to do with that shooting. As for that boy…”
“Georgie Korozakis,” his wife said.
“Moonstuck on Darlene was all he was ever guilty of. She was a looker, that Darlene.”
“An attractive girl,” his wife agreed.
“Great body. Damned shame, the way those looks got washed away, living out on that farm,” Clarence said. “Even cutting it back, the way they had to after Herb took off, it’s still too much ground to take care of for one woman.”
“Still, they were better off with him gone,” the wife said.