Текст книги "Murder on the Run"

Автор книги: Medora Sale

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

“You mean, you weren’t there?” said Sanders. “Not at all?”

“Oh, I was there when we picked the girl up, but I had other things to do, and Constable Gruber dropped me off on his way to the rendezvous. I’m afraid I don’t know what happened after that. Except what I’ve told you.” He smiled gently at the two of them.

“And who was this poor deprived father, may I ask? Do you think we could discuss the matter with him? After all, if he had a custody order, we might be able to help him have it enforced.”

“Well, the document he showed me was from the state of Maine. He said it was a custody order. But I don’t believe he gave his last name—it must, of course, be Griffiths, mustn’t it, if that’s the girl’s name. His name is Pete, and I think he’s staying at the Park Plaza Hotel—close to his daughter’s school, to catch a glimpse of her if he can. Is the girl back at school, might I ask?”

“No, you might not,” snapped Sanders. “The girl’s whereabouts is classified information. In case someone else tries to get custody of her.” Sanders leaned beside the door of the office, and Dubinsky wandered casually over to the space between the desk and the entrance to the filthy little kitchen behind. “It was a lovely story, Jimmy. I enjoyed every minute of it. Only it was a crock of shit from beginning to end. Unfortunately for you, the girl was not unconscious. Someone should have told you how much of that stuff you have to give a person her size to keep her under that long. She heard it all. And Gruber has confirmed her story. We’ve got you.”

Fielding slowly started to open the drawer of his desk, without looking to either side. His right hand moved gently into it. “Look out!” yelled Dubinsky, throwing himself at him, as Sanders ducked sideways and tried frantically to extract his gun from the tangle of his suit jacket.

“Gentlemen, please,” said Fielding. “I was only trying to get my gloves out of the drawer.” He held up a pair of gray leather gloves and slammed the drawer shut. He reached for his Irish tweed hat and his raincoat from the stand by the desk and smiled.

Dubinsky pulled at the handle. The drawer was locked. He gave it a ferocious yank and it sprang open. “Do you have a license for this?” he asked, picking the revolver up gingerly and checking to see if the safety was on. Fielding shrugged and moved toward the office door.

Marny slowly scanned the dimly lit, smoky restaurant from her position by the door. There he was, sitting with a man almost as casually elegant as himself. She tossed an incoherent mutter at the hostess and bore down on the table. “Hi, Grant,” she growled, as brightly as she could. “I thought I might run into you here.” She half-smiled with blank eyes at his companion. “That answering machine of yours gives me the twitches, and so I decided that I really needed a drink anyway. I wish you wouldn’t put such cute remarks on it. I can never think of anything to say back.”

Grant’s expression remained carefully neutral. “What a pleasant surprise,” he said, in a very unsurprised voice. “Have you met Geoff Porter? He was in the series with me.”

Marny’s head whipped around. “That must be why you look so familiar,” she said. Now warmth dripped from every syllable. “How are negotiations going with the U.S. networks and all that?” she asked cozily.

“Nothing much happening at the moment,” said Grant. Geoff raised an eyebrow in his direction and then lifted his glass to drain his drink.

“These things certainly do get stalemated,” he said agreeably. “But I had better get going. I fear I am already a little late for this evening’s jollification. Thanks for the drink. And the interesting discussion. Goodbye, uh, nice to meet you.”

“Sorry,” said Marny, as he picked his way between the tables, “I guess I chased him away.”

“Not really,” said Grant with a slight yawn. “I think he actually did have somewhere he had to get to. Some sort of reception or other that’s due to finish in about half an hour. But why did you come searching me out? I take it that’s what you were doing. After all, Giuseppe’s isn’t your usual stomping ground, is it?”

“Look, Grant, I have to have a talk to you. Is this place safe?”

“As safe as any, sweetheart. Talk away.” He looked both amused and faintly bored.

“Well—it’s just that ever since Jane died—I mean, I’m having a party on Friday night, like usual, you know. And there are going to be a lot of people there. I used to have two contacts, but one fizzled out on me, and lately I was relying on Jane. I mean, I only used her for emergencies and extra stuff like that before, because she was more expensive than this other guy. But he’s gone to Florida, and I mean, I don’t think he’ll be coming back. Look, Grant, those people are going to be expecting to buy from me, and my only two sources have dried up.” Her voice was low and nervous; she stabbed the air between them in her eagerness to be understood. “You have a source, don’t you? Do you think you could put me on to him? Your source wasn’t just Jane, was it? I never got the impression it was.” She glanced quickly around the room, stopping to look closely at the people at the tables closest to them. The sudden voice of the waitress in her ear sent her several inches into the air until she processed the familiar words. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll have a rum and Coke.”

“Well, it used to be,” said Grant. “Although I did get a line on her supplier. He’s a useful guy. I don’t know just where he fits in in the larger scheme of things, but he does do his own importing. I imagine there’s someone higher up bankrolling him, of course. One doesn’t like to ask about these things.” His voice drawled, unconcerned. “In fact, I was about to do a deal with Jane concerning a certain expansion of interests—increased marketing, you might say, tapping a demand that certainly is there. But that is something that you and I might consider at a later date, supposing we decided that we could work together in peace and harmony.”

“Jesus, Grant, if you could work with Jane, you could work with anybody. The two of you fought like drunken Finns.”

“No ethnic slurs, if you don’t mind. I’m an ethnic myself. And Jane and I had a certain common set of interests beside business that kept things going, you might say.” He smiled.

“Yeah. Bed. Anyway, can you give me the name of your contact?”

“No, ma’am. He wouldn’t like that very much. But I’ll give him your name and home telephone number. He’ll call you if he’s interested. If you don’t hear from him, there’s not much I can do.” Grant shrugged.

“Great.” Marny dropped a couple of bills down on the table between them and left, just as a rum and Coke was set down in front of her empty chair.

Eleanor sat in the spring twilight at her desk. She stared out the window of the elegantly redone red-brick Victorian house that was home to Webb and MacLeod, Real Estate, trying to avoid the clutter that had accumulated in the past few days. It had not been a terrific time to be non compos mentis, apparently. Several people, obviously desperate for housing, had been trying to get in touch with her over the weekend. She felt a pang or two—one of guilt and one of regret for probable commissions lost—and sorted out her messages. In the midst of this dreary contemplation of opportunities missed, her phone buzzed. At the same time, Frances, on her way out the door, stuck her head in the office and said, “Phone. It’s a man. A friend, I think.” Frances spent her days trying to marry off all the unattached agents in the firm.

“Hello. Eleanor Scott speaking,” she said cautiously, more afraid it might be one of those people she was supposed to have called back several days ago.

“Hello to you, too. Are you busy?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on. “If you’re not, I’m going up to see Amanda once more and then out to eat. Want to come?”

“Yes, I am,” she said firmly. “I have to make a living.” She paused a second. “On the other hand, I would like to see how she’s doing.” She crumbled completely. “Well, okay. I’ll meet you up there.” Her face brightened as she swept everything off her desk and slammed the drawer shut.

Amanda was sitting up in bed, much encumbered still with plaster, but looking very lively and tackling an enormous bunch of grapes with one hand. She waved the grapes at them in a gesture of welcome. “Hi. Mom has gone to take my father to the airport; he has to get back. But she’s staying until I’m out of here. So I’m all alone. Except for my friend out there. Do you know that he won’t let me eat anything except stuff my parents and Aunt Kate bring me? It’s awful.” She gestured at them to sit down. “And I suppose it’s all your fault, too,” she said, looking accusingly at Sanders. “Leslie brought me a box of chocolates, and I couldn’t have them.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said, unrepentant. “But if you’re not too annoyed, I have a favour to ask.” She grinned. “Would you look at these pictures and see if you recognize Jimmy in any of them? I know you say you didn’t get a good look at him, but we think we know who he is; it would help if you could confirm it for us.”

“Sure,” she said, eating another grape and putting down the bunch. “But I really didn’t see him, you know.” She wiped her good hand on the sheet and spread the pictures out on the bed in front of her. She looked intently. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “Is that ever funny. I don’t recognize Jimmy, but look at this one! It’s the man in the gray Honda!” And she picked up the picture of James Feldman, also known as Jimmy Fielding.

“Did everyone know about the man in the gray Honda but me?” asked Sanders over a plate of goulash in the closest Hungarian eatery. “That might have made things hang together a bit, you know.” He glared at her.

“Don’t harangue,” she said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. Heather probably knows more than I do.”

“Terrific,” he said, irritated. “And I wonder what the significance of ‘all the kids’ is in the statement ‘all the kids knew about it.’ The whole school?”

“I wouldn’t think so. Just her friends and anyone they told it to. Shouldn’t take more than a month to figure it out,” she said with a laugh. His glare checked her mirth. “Sorry, but you couldn’t imagine the speed at which news travels in a girls’ school. I doubt if you’d ever figure out who knew one piece of information at one particular time. But I’m sure that Roz will do anything she can to help you. Of course, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Unless you want to go around and try to see all Amanda’s best friends and see what they say.”

“No,” he said. “That’s probably a waste of time. I think I’ll concentrate on Mr. Fielding himself, and see what he can come up with in the way of an explanation.”

Chapter 13

Sanders walked into the familiar room and headed toward his desk with the profound conviction that he had never left it. The sight of Dubinsky, yawning and bleary-eyed, only served to heighten the illusion. It had been after three when they had finally decided that they were going to get nothing from Jimmy Fielding. For six hours he had sat and smiled and referred all questions to his lawyer. A sleepy nurse on night duty had thought that maybe Fielding’s mug shot represented the face she had seen in the hall outside room 526; but, then again, she hadn’t noticed him that clearly. Sanders’ jaw still felt stiff from suppressing his anger. He yearned to get the man alone for a few hours, to see if he could shake that complacent grin off his face, to evoke just a flash of fear in those bland eyes. Dammit. If they hadn’t been in such a hurry to hustle him downtown so they could get a positive I.D. on him from the Griffiths girl, he could have—but no. Whoever it was that Jimmy worked for would be a hell of a lot more terrifying to him than John Sanders, detective inspector, could ever be since Sanders was unlikely to carve him up and feed his guts to the gulls, no matter how tempting the idea might be. “Hi, Ed,” he yawned. “How’s it going? Any word on Parsons?”

“Not yet,” said Dubinsky. “McInnis is on. He’ll call if she comes to.”

“I think I’ll drop over to the hospital and keep an eye on things. We’d better take a copy of that sketch—if it’s ready—in case she can identify the bastard. And maybe we can get something new out of the Griffiths girl while we’re waiting.” He flipped half-heartedly through the mail on his desk, opened some, dropped the rest into a drawer, and then turned the leaf of his desk calendar. He peered at the cryptic scribblings on it. “What do you know,” he said. “This is the day Conway’s lawyer gets back from Mexico. Call him, eh, Dubinsky, and tell him we’ll be over this morning. Don’t give him a choice. I have something to pick up first. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Dubinsky fell into stride beside Sanders along Dundas Street. The weather, which had spoiled Easter with wind and cold, was tormenting office workers by being warm and sunny now that the long weekend was over. “I couldn’t get him,” he said finally, as they headed the few blocks over to the hospital. “He’s not getting back to the office until tomorrow, she says. And she hasn’t the slightest idea where he is.” Dubinsky grunted in disgust. “Which she seems to think is pretty funny. If I was that guy I’d get another secretary.”

Sanders noted the empty chair outside room 526 and scowled. He flung open the door, half expecting to find Amanda’s mangled corpse inside. But she was sitting tranquilly up in bed, watching a game show, with a young police constable in the chair beside her. “Working hard?” said Sanders, and jerked his head in the direction of the door. The young man fled. Sanders pulled a brown paper bag out of his pocket and dumped it on Amanda’s bed. She picked it up doubtfully and glanced inside, then pulled out three large Swiss chocolate bars—a hazelnut, a nougat, and a praline. “I hope you like those kinds,” he said. “I’m sorry about the food.”

“Mmmm,” she said. “I love them. But you really didn’t have to. Did you come all the way over here just to bring me chocolate? I’d feel awful if you did.” She was trying to open each one as she talked and to sample all three flavours, not an easy task for one hand.

“Well, no. I had other reasons.” He forced his fatigue-numbed facial muscles into a smile. “We’d like you to try to remember everything you can about Jimmy.” Amanda nodded. “First off, how often was he there?”

Her slightly freckled nose wrinkled in concentration as she considered the question. “I suppose once or twice a week, after school, usually. He’d just be sitting there in his car. We used to stand around on Leslie’s front porch talking, sometimes for a long time, and he’d be there all the time.”

“Can you remember when he first started showing up?”

“We first noticed him about five or six weeks ago, but he could have been around before that. You don’t really pay any attention to cars just parked there, you know. In fact, we probably never would have noticed him except that one day Mrs. Conway walked by the car and he called out something to her. She stopped and looked at him for a second, and then went right on. That was when we decided that he was following her, and we started making up these crazy stories about who he was and what he was doing. As a joke, you know.” She laughed. “Our best one was the oil sheik—he was a filthy rich oil sheik, dying of passion for her, and was waiting there to abduct her and carry her off to the Persian Gulf where she had to teach his other wives physics.” By this time she was giggling wildly, and Sanders and Dubinsky were staring blankly at her. She took a deep breath. “That was because one day a police car came by while he was there, and he took off right away—so, obviously he had something to hide, you see.”

Dubinsky looked up sharply from his notebook. “Looks like a drop, doesn’t it?”

Sanders nodded. “More convincing than the thought that little Jimmy was dying of love for her.” He shook his head. “Who’s he connected with, Dubinsky? You know him from way back, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “That’s hard. He always seemed to be a loner. But he’s been mixed up in a lot of mob-connected stuff.”

“Then we’ll have to work at it from the other end,” said Sanders, turning abruptly back to the girl. “Who knew that you knew who was in the gray Honda?”

Amanda stopped to consider for a moment. “Well,” she said, “Heather did. And she could have told her mother, I suppose.” He glared at her. “And Leslie. She saw it too, lots of times, although she didn’t walk by it, the way Heather and I did, so she couldn’t see in and recognize the guy. But aside from them, we talked about it at lunch one day.”

“When?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. One of the days after Conway was killed. I suppose Monday or Tuesday. It wasn’t right after, I know that. Probably Monday or Tuesday.”

“Who was there?”

“That’s harder. Leslie must have been there—”

“Leslie who, Miss Griffiths?”

“Sorry. Leslie Smith. And Jennifer—she always eats lunch with us. Jennifer Delisle. And I think Sarah Wilcox was there, too.” She shook her head again. “Jessica Martin might have been in the room, too. She usually eats lunch with us.”

“Do you know if any of those girls told anyone else?”

Amanda tried to shrug her shoulder and failed. “Probably. I never asked them not to tell anyone. But you’d have to talk to them.”

Sanders snapped his notebook shut and stood up. “Thanks. Would you like that miserable specimen out there to come in and keep you company?” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll send him in. Don’t feed him all your chocolate.”

It only took them four minutes to travel between the lively Amanda and the surgical waiting room. McInnes was sitting there patiently, among the anxious parents and spouses, flipping through a magazine. “Any word?” asked Sanders.

“No, sir, not yet,” he said, getting to his feet. “I brought a tape recorder—they said we could try it in the recovery room, in case she comes to.” There seemed no response to this, and a gloomy silence fell over the room again.

It was at least twenty minutes before they were beckoned to the door by a tired and irritable-looking man. “Sorry,” he said. “We did what we could, but there never was much of a chance, you know. It was a miracle she hung on as long as she did.”

“You mean she’s dead?” said Dubinsky, startled.

“That’s right,” replied the surgeon. “And I trust you’ll find who did it to her before I have to treat any more like this.” His voice was cold and angry.

Thirty minutes later four very apprehensive girls were ushered into a small seminar room at Kingsmede Hall. They relaxed visibly at the sight of a pair of plain-clothes policemen. A group summons out of class like this usually got you Miss Johnson and a whole lot of trouble; this looked like twenty minutes’ relief from sweating through some dreary novel. They giggled themselves into four chairs and prepared to waste time. All four reluctantly denied knowing anything useful, however. Jessica Martin had to deny knowledge of any Honda or anyone in it. She had been sick last week and couldn’t possibly have been at lunch that day.

“I remember that conversation, though,” interposed Leslie. “We were trying to figure out if the guy was her husband or her boyfriend—only seriously, this time. But I don’t think I ever told anyone about it. Honest.” She looked at him with innocent brown eyes. He sighed and wished he were better at distinguishing truth from falsehood in adolescent females.

“Wasn’t it Amanda who said that a friend of her aunt knew someone in the police who said that the murder was done by the rapist?” asked Jennifer. “So the man in the gray Honda wasn’t important and it didn’t matter who he was. I told my dad, but he didn’t believe me.”

“What didn’t he believe? That Amanda’s aunt—”

Jennifer broke out in fits of giggles. “No,” she said, gasping for breath. “That Amanda had seen someone outside the house—Conway’s house.” She giggled again. “He said that girls our age have very fertile imaginations and we probably couldn’t tell the difference between a gray Honda and a beige Pinto.”

“I told my dad, and he thought it was clever of Amanda to notice something like that,” said Sarah, blushing furiously. “But I never told anyone else. I mean, except my mom and little brother, too.”

Sanders looked intently at the four faces in front of him. “Thank you,” he said morosely, “you’ve been a big help,” and watched them swarm from the room.

“So,” said Sanders, “there we have it. Not one of them, if you can believe them, told anyone except members of their own families. I wish I knew if they were telling the truth, or if they think they’ll get into trouble by saying they told other friends. They all sounded as if they were lying through their teeth. If I got a performance like that out of a suspect, I’d be on the phone to the Crown, working up charges.”

“I think,” said Dubinsky, “that they giggle and blush even when they’re telling the truth.”

“They also do it when they’re lying,” growled Sanders. “But let’s assume we heard the truth. Then we’d better find out something about their parents, wouldn’t you say?” He strode off in search of the principal.

Roz was standing in the hall watching uniformed bodies hurtle by her on their way to class. Sanders raced to grab her before she disappeared again. “Do you have information on those girls’ parents? Like what they do and where they work? We’re trying to establish a link between Amanda and the men who attacked her.” Roz looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and walked back into Annabel’s office.

“Pull the admission files for those four girls, please, and bring them into the seminar room. Thanks.” She turned to him. “I hope that’s what you need,” she said, then she smiled dismissively and left.

In a matter of minutes, Annabel dropped four file folders on the table in front of them. “That’s confidential information, you know,” she said tartly. “Ordinarily we don’t let anyone look at it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask me.” With a mildly poisonous look, she swept out.

“Okay,” muttered Sanders. “Eliminate the Martin girl, since she wasn’t at school—although I suppose we should check that.” He placed her folder to one side. “Right. Smith. Mr. Geoffrey Smith.” He scribbled down both addresses, home and business. “He’s an architect; they live on MacNiece Street, a few houses away from the victim’s apartment building.” He picked up the next folder. “Delisle. Dr. Martin Delisle. A plastic surgeon. I wonder if he makes millions doing face lifts.” He continued scribbling. “And last, Wilcox. Mr. Paul Wilcox. Well, look at that—Wilcox the MPP. They have everything at this place, don’t they?” He looked up. “Which one of these guys had any connection with Jimmy, do you suppose?”

Dubinsky shrugged. “Could have been any of them. I’d put my money on the politician, though. A man with Jimmy’s connections could be very useful to someone like that.”

“How about the architect? I’d be willing to bet Jimmy’s network extends to construction and building contracts, wouldn’t you?” He piled all the files neatly once again. “Or, of course, it could have been anyone of them telling somebody else, or it could have been someone connected with one of the other girls who passed it on after she heard it through the grapevine.” He yawned again. “Let’s go back to Mrs. Conway’s old friends and try out the trafficking scenario. I like it—it seems to fit some of them very nicely.”

It was one o’clock in the afternoon when he stumbled out of his sweat-soaked bed and into the bathroom. The face that peered back at him from the mirror belonged to someone else. It was flabby and covered with stubble; the right cheek was hideously disfigured with claw marks. He shuddered in disgust. He had fallen asleep in his underwear; now he reached over and pulled on a pair of wrinkled cords and a sweatshirt, picked up his dirty socks and dragged them on. He grabbed a pile of quarters from the change on the dresser and stumbled down the winding stairs, yanking on boots as he passed the door. His destination was the row of newspaper boxes at the corner. He blinked as his eyes hit daylight. For four days now he had been sitting inside the house with curtains drawn, sleeping erratically and infrequently, sending out for pizza on the few occasions that he noticed hunger. He was living besieged, surrounded by enemies, enemies so powerful and clever that they could manipulate the news. They were lulling him into a false sense of security in order to set traps for him.

He had already fed the first coin in the slot before he noticed the front page of the afternoon paper. His gut twisted in a spasm of pain. He took a deep breath, carefully opened the box, and took out a paper, then fed more coins into the morning paper boxes and took out one of each. He couldn’t read it out here on the street. People would look at him from every window in the development, wonder why he was buying all these papers, wonder what he was doing, wonder where he went in his lovely van. He walked sedately back into his house, wanting to run, not daring to. In the living room, he unfolded the paper, turned on the lamp beside the couch, and forced himself to look at the front page again.

“Have You Seen This Man?” the banner screamed in red above a sketch of someone intended to be him.

Police sources revealed today that they are seeking a man in his twenties, about six feet tall, with light brown curly hair, for questioning in relation to a series of vicious attacks on women in the Metro area in recent months. The sketch shown was supplied by police artist John MacVey, working from descriptions given by an unidentified young woman who was attacked on Friday. Thanks to the rapid intervention of three bystanders, she was unharmed. It is possible that he has scratch marks on his face. The fourth victim in this series of brutal murders died this morning (see story, p. 5).

He got up and trudged up the stairs to the bathroom and stared once again into the mirror. Then at the sketch. Then at the mirror. They had made his face too long and too thin, he thought, and his eyes too small and narrow. He splashed water in his burning eyes, then turned and walked back down to the living room.

Two miles away Ginny stood perplexed in her mother’s living room. After a minute or two, she walked over to the front hall and called upstairs. “Rob! Come down here a minute, will you?” A large, amiable-looking young man lounged down the steps, two at a time, and sat down at the bottom.

“What can I do for you, eh, lady?” he said, yawning.

“Are you busy right now?” Worried lines creased her face.

“Just studying. But it’ll keep. What’s the matter?”

Her eyes swam with tears. She always seemed to be on the verge of tears these days. “It’s Glenn,” she said. “Come up to my room. I don’t want Mom to hear.” He nodded and followed her up. He had long since ceased to expect his big sister to make sense. He sprawled on her bed and looked lazily at her perched on a hard-backed chair. “I’m not going back there,” she said, grimly, as if he had just told her that she must, on pain of death. “I don’t care what anybody says.”

“I don’t blame you,” said her brother. “He’s a jerk. And I don’t think you have to worry about Mom, either. She never liked him. But what can I do for you right now?”

“All my clothes and stuff are there, and I should tell him that I’m not coming back, but I can’t get through to him. I’ve phoned every time of day; I’ve let the phone ring twenty times. I just called Donna next door, and she said that he’s home. She’s seen him go out to get the papers and take the van out. But I don’t want to go over there and see him.” She shivered.

“Do you want me to go?” asked Rob. “I’m not scared of the son of a bitch. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll go over right now. I need some exercise. I can take Kevin with me and we’ll beat the shit out of him.” He yawned again as he sat upright.

Ginny laughed. “No, that’s okay. Just get my clothes—and my shoes, so I can go back to work. Here, I’ll make a list for you. You can stuff it all in my old duffle bag.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her little desk, and started making a list, looking animated and full of purpose for the first time in weeks. At that moment, the afternoon paper came flying across their front lawn, skidded over the porch, and landed, for the third time that month, in a wet and soggy corner of the front garden.

Rob had reflected briefly on his brother-in-law’s uncertain temper, and therefore when he pulled up in front of the townhouse his formidable friend Kevin was with him. “Just in case the guy pulls a knife or something,” he had said.

“Sure,” said Kevin. They played on the same hockey team, worked out in the same gym, and he was just as happy to be mixing it up here as on the ice, as far as that went. Anything to help out a buddy and a teammate. As they were getting out of their car, however, reinforcements in the shape of a police car pulled up behind them. A uniformed constable climbed out and walked over to them.

“You Mr. Glenn Morrison?” he asked, reading from a list in his hand.

“Nope,” said Rob. “He lives in there, and we’re just going to pay him a little visit.” The constable followed the two up to the minute front porch.

Rob leaned on the doorbell for about thirty seconds. No response. He looked at the police officer and shrugged. “Did you want to see him about something important?”

“Are you a friend?”

Rob shook his head. “Just a brother-in-law. What’s going on?”

The constable raised his large fist and pounded on the door. All three of them listened for answering footsteps. “Does he own a light brown van?” was the response.

“Yeah,” said Rob, “does he ever! It’s like his baby. Did he have an accident?” he asked curiously.

“Is there a back door?” asked the constable.

“I have something better than that,” said Rob. “I have the front-door key.” He pulled it out of his pocket. “My sister asked me to go in and get some clothes for her. You want to look around, be my guest.” He turned the key and threw open the door with a flourish.