He pointed his finger to Clamp Reems’ property. ‘Clamp told me he’d been down there longer than since August, 1982.’ Reems had told him no such thing, but it was not a time for truths.
‘Every mark in that ledger is right. I’ve been keeping it myself since ’seventy-five.’
‘Well, someone’s wrong.’
‘He might have meant he was one of them belonged to the country club, before it burned,’ she said.
He looked down at the ledger. ‘That large property that got its taxes reduced?’
‘It wasn’t anywhere near an actual country club, leastways not in the way people think of such fancy places. That’s just what they called it for the title. It was nothing but a shack, like the rest of the places down there.’
‘Clamp owned it?’
‘Don’t know for certain whether he was one of them.’
‘Come to think of it, I heard Clamp, Horace Wiggins, Bud Wiley and Doc Farmont all had a piece of that cabin.’
Her face slipped naturally into an expression of distaste. ‘No telling who came and went down there, drinking, fishing, doing God knows what. Quite naturally, they didn’t want to advertise their membership.’
He squinted at a brief notation. ‘It burned on the Fourth of July, 1982?’ That was just a few days after the murders.
‘Fire took it in a flash. Punks, most likely, playing with fireworks.’
‘It says Country Club Partners still owns the parcel.’
‘Thought you were looking for a cabin.’
‘Vacant land would do; I could build exactly the kind of place I have in mind.’
‘Can’t help you with who owns it. Money order comes twice a year for the taxes, saying the remitter is Country Club Partners.’
She closed the ledger and picked it up.
He left, thinking that Pauly Pribilski and Betty Jo Dean were still coughing up dead ends.
THIRTY-SIX
‘You can run, but you can’t hide,’ Rogenet said when Mac answered his phone.
‘I’m in my truck. I can come over right away.’
‘No need. I filed first thing this morning.’
‘I thought you wanted to discuss it first.’
‘April didn’t tell you she called me Saturday?’ Rogenet chuckled. ‘After cussing me out for my invoices, we talked everything through. She’s a smart woman, Mac. She knows the case as well as you. She said you talked about it, and I should go ahead at my discretion. This morning we filed on official misconduct, but we can always allege additional counts later. That’s OK, right? She said what with the break-in and all-’
‘The break-in?’ Mac asked, suddenly the dumbest man in town.
‘How bad was it?’
‘Let me call you back,’ he said.
April’s car was in the parking lot. It shouldn’t have been. The Bird’s Nest was closed Mondays.
The kitchen door had a fresh square of plywood screwed where glass had been. The door was locked. He pulled out his key. It didn’t work. He bent down to the cylinder. It was shiny, new. He pounded on the new plywood.
‘I just talked to Rogenet,’ he said when April opened the door.
‘I should have told him you were too frickin’ absorbed in playing detective to worry about staying out of prison. Lucky for you, I had the break-in to explain why you didn’t call him.’ She picked up two shiny keys from the counter and handed them to him. ‘Things are crashing down, Mac. If you pull your head out of your ass, you’ll see that.’
‘What’s missing here?’
‘Nothing, as far as I can tell. We emptied the registers before closing on Friday night, of course. It might have been kids, looking for booze, but every bottle in the bar and in the basement seems to be here. Maybe they got scared off.’
‘When?’
‘Sometime before I got in at ten, Saturday morning. I saw the broken back door glass right away.’ She stopped. ‘What’s that look on your face for?’
He told her about seeing Ryerson Wainwright speeding out of Grand Point, very early Saturday morning.
‘You’re sure it was him?’
‘No, but how many bright red Cadillacs have you seen?’
‘You’re getting paranoid. Why would he risk smashing your back door? There’s nothing here to find.’
‘Strategy for the countersuit, maybe.’
‘I looked around upstairs, too, and saw that strategy. One blank yellow pad of paper containing no times and dates to prove you were at home, in Linder County?’ She bit her lip in frustration.
He told her about Jonah Ridl, and going to the courthouse just an hour before.
She threw up her hands. ‘You went all the way up to Wisconsin, and then now to the courthouse to see who might have owned a cabin where Betty Jo Dean could have been kept?’
He nodded.
‘What the hell for, Mac? Why don’t you wait until you’re in prison? You’ll have all kinds of time then.’
‘A girl was murdered.’
‘Thirty-two years ago.’
‘No one seems to care.’
‘Which girl are we talking about? The one here, in Grand Point?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then here’s who cares, Mac: the librarian, who’s surely been blabbing about you pestering her for missing microfilms. The old bat at the newspaper office, who must have told Wiggins you didn’t like the crime scene photo he took. Jimmy Bales, the damned law in this county, who you accused of negligence. The old gin bags who come here to drink in peace, who you badgered about things they want to forget. And God knows how many waitresses at the Willow Tree who are telling their customers – customers, can you imagine? – that you’re a lunatic, looking into an old murder when you should be defending yourself against an indictment and trying to keep your own restaurant from bankrupting us all. That’s who cares, Mac. We might as well light up the sign out front: “Mayor Bassett is trying to piss off everybody in Grand Point. Come on in, he’ll do you next.”’
‘April-’
‘Let me ask you something else. During your little weekend vacation, did you find time to stop at a cemetery?’
‘Damn it.’
‘Just tell me: did you stop?’
He knew better than to lie. ‘I was driving almost right by it, Sunday morning.’
‘How long has it been since you were there?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘How long?’
‘Two, maybe three months.’
She started across the kitchen. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, stopping at the broken door. ‘Some crabby old woman called for you, probably wanting money we owe. Her number’s on your desk, next to the blank paper you prepared for Rogenet.’ She slammed the door behind her, and a few seconds later her wheels spun as she gunned her car out of the lot.
April was right. To seize upon Betty Jo Dean when an indictment and a collapsing restaurant were set to ruin him was beyond lunacy. Perhaps she was right about the other thing, too. Maybe Betty Jo Dean’s killer wasn’t really who he was chasing.
He grabbed the liquor inventory sheet and went down to the basement. April had been right about the inventory. Nothing had been taken.
He went up to the office. A pink message slip was tucked under the phone. He didn’t recognize the name, but didn’t doubt it was someone looking for an old bill to be paid.
He prepared a new liquor order and paper-clipped a check to the form. As with all his suppliers, the liquor distributor demanded cash upfront.
He worked next on his quarterly payroll report. When that was done, he took the restaurant’s copy to file in the cabinet across the office. And saw.
The bottom drawer was open, barely an inch.
He wasn’t always a careful man. But when it came to keeping that particular drawer closed he was conscientious to a fault. Right after they’d bought the restaurant he’d skinned his leg and drawn blood on that drawer because he’d left it open. He’d never made that mistake again.
Now it was open.
He bent down to look at the folders. The payroll records and building documents were in their usual order, as were the closing papers at the very back. All were where he’d left them, including the tan envelope the previous owner’s wife had given him. He pulled it out and took a look inside. The menu, the Chamber booklet and the news clippings were all there. He put it back and closed the drawer. He couldn’t imagine there was anything in that drawer, or in the entire restaurant, that was worth breaking in to look at.
Still, he didn’t suppose an intruder would have known that.
He dialed the number April had left, ready again to fake good cheer and make false promises of improving financial health.
The woman answered on the second ring. ‘What?’ April was right; the woman was a crab.
‘This is Mac Bassett-’
She cut him off. ‘You need to stop this damn foolishness over my sister’s death.’