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.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘I may no longer live in Grand Point, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep up with the goings-on,’ Bella Telkin said. ‘Stop using my sister’s death to draw attention away from your own troubles.’
‘Someone asked me to look into it.’
‘I don’t care. Stop it. No one needs any more talk about Pinktown and her dropping out of school, and the men she might have known. It’s over; she’s dead; it’s done.’
‘Yet you wanted a newspaper article done on the twenty-fifth anniversary of your sister’s death.’
‘Who told you that? That damned newspaper only reopened old wounds.’
‘We’re talking about the same article? Jen Jessup’s?’
‘I told her – no, implored her – to leave things alone. But no, she had to dredge it all up again.’
‘Maybe I can give the sheriff another nudge.’
‘The way I hear it, the law’s nudging you straight into prison.’
‘One question, please?’
‘Goodbye, Mayor Bassett.’
‘Did anyone from the family view the body?’
‘If you’re suggesting it wasn’t Betty Jo lying there, you’re as crazy as people say.’
‘I’m bothered that there was only one crime scene photo taken, and that shows her head completely covered with leaves. That doesn’t seem to be proper police procedure.’
For a moment she said nothing, then: ‘I still have nightmares about going down to identify her remains. She was so badly decomposed.’
‘You saw her?’
‘They said it was a formality, but someone from the family had to sign. I was older than Betty Jo by twelve years, but I was still only twenty-nine at the time. I-’
Mac interrupted. ‘You actually saw decomposition?’
‘Bud Wiley, or maybe the nephew, Luther, told me the sight of her might torment me for the rest of my life, that she’d been lying in that field for two nights and there’d been animals and all. They were most considerate over at Wiley’s. I was spared from having to see too much.’
‘But you did see her?’
‘I saw all I needed. I recognized the slacks and the belt they showed me. And I recognized my mother’s wedding ring on her right hand. My mother quit wearing it when she got the arthritis so bad, and Betty Jo, God knows why, took a fancy to it. The ring alone was enough to identify her.’
‘You never actually saw her body-?’ He stopped. He was talking to dead air. Bella Dean Telkin had hung up.
The crime scene photo didn’t show much, but it didn’t show decomposition. There’d been no obvious swelling of her forearm and the skin around her lower back, as would be expected on a corpse left out in summer heat for two full days. One of the Wileys had lied to Bella, covering something up by making sure Betty Jo Dean was covered all the way up.
But there’d been another lie, much fresher. He called Jen Jessup.
‘I don’t want us to start getting along,’ she said.
‘When’s your interview with me going to run? I want the word out that I’m countersuing Wainwright.’
‘I haven’t finished writing it.’
‘And then you’ll have trouble placing it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘My lawyer filed this morning, accusing Wainwright of official malfeasance. More charges will follow.’
‘I’ll put that in.’ Then, too casually, she asked, ‘How are you coming along with Betty Jo Dean?’
He was just about certain now that she’d never had any intention of mentioning his countersuit in her piece about him. No matter; it was time to float a lie. ‘I’m thinking I’ll talk to that sister, the one who begged you to do a twenty-fifth anniversary piece on Betty Jo, to recharge the investigation. What was her name?’
‘My God, don’t call her,’ Jen said, too fast. ‘I heard the article woke old nightmares. Leave her alone.’
There was no doubt. Jen Jessup had lied; she was the one who’d wanted the investigation reopened, with that article she’d written.
‘When you researched that piece, did you run across a reporter named Ridl?’
‘No,’ she said quickly.
‘Did you check out the Chicago newspaper morgues?’
‘Why are you asking these things?’
‘Idle curiosity.’
‘No. Rockford, DeKalb and Grand Point gave me what I needed.’
‘And Bella.’
‘What?’ she asked, confused.
‘Betty Jo’s sister,’ he said. ‘The one who insisted you write that article.’
‘You’ll keep me updated on your progress?’
‘You mean about my countersuit?’ he asked, playing dumb as a brick.
‘And the other?’
It was enough. He said he would and left it at that. He didn’t blame her. Her sister was dead, perhaps murdered, and that trumped everything.
He rummaged in his desk until he found the voice-activated digital recorder he’d bought when he’d been so full of hope for Grand Point, the restaurant and the rest of his life. He’d carried it everywhere, afraid of letting even one good idea slip away. It was long ago.
He thumbed it on. The batteries were still fresh.
Not daring to pause even for an instant to consider what he was about to do, he got up and drove into town.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Horace Wiggins leaned back in his chair, his feet up on his desk.
‘Mr Mayor,’ Wiggins said, with no trace of enthusiasm at all.
‘Mr Publisher. I stopped by last week.’
Wiggins shot a glance at the dour assistant and rumored squeeze. ‘You were looking for old copies of the Democrat.’
‘The microfilms for the Rockford Register-Star from 1982 have disappeared from the library.’
‘Pity, that,’ Wiggins said.
‘I’d like to read your coverage of the Pribilski-Dean murders.’
‘Horrible, that,’ Wiggins said.
‘You have the back issues?’
Wiggins made an exaggerated show of looking around the mess in the cramped room. ‘Somewhere in my garage, maybe. Would take a year to find them.’
‘Pity, that,’ Mac said.
It was confrontation, at ultra-low speed.
‘Your crime scene photo of the Devil’s Backbone was troubling.’
Wiggins dropped his feet to the floor. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It doesn’t show anything. I’m wondering why you didn’t remove the leaves from the back of her head and take a photo that shows the wound.’
‘No one needed more.’
‘Who decided that?’
‘It’s been a long time,’ Wiggins said.
Mac left. The first visit had gone well.
Death had come again to Wiley’s. A row of cars with orange funeral stickers on their windshields was lined up behind a gray hearse.
Luther Wiley was in his office. ‘Hello, Mac,’ he said, looking up.
Luther’s office, like the rest of the funeral home, was embedded thick with the scent of decades of dying flowers. Mac supposed Luther must have become embedded that way too, over time, though he might have personalized his own scent with the spray that gave his pompadour a soft sheen. It was hard to tell. Certainly his cheeks were unnaturally red, and Mac had the unflattering thought that Wiley used rouge. He could only hope that the man wasn’t dipping into the powders that were kept for the clients.