Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_04 (5 page)

“Hell of it was”—now Dugan's voice was harsh—“the driver of the sports car, Mr. Lance Whitney Cole the Third, ran a red light. He swore to the cops it was green. Another witness thought it was red. When CeeCee came to my office, I expected her to lie, to protect him. They'd been dating for about six months. So it blew me away when she told the truth. She was sorry she had to do it. But she did. He ran the red light. She saw it.” He gave me a cool, level look. “You don't look impressed, Mrs. Collins. In most trials, liars are thicker than cottonmouths in a muddy creek in August. And here's this rich girl telling the goddamn truth. She was tough. She was the difference in the decision. I called her the day after the jury came in, said I wanted to buy her a drink. That was a Friday afternoon. We took a plane to Cancún that night. It was the greatest weekend of my life.”

They say opposites attract. But that's rarely been true in my experience. If I now had a picture of CeeCee Burke, it was perhaps a reflection of this confident, assertive lawyer. He said CeeCee was tough. He was tough. He was also intelligent, aggressive, controlling, and impetuous. What did that tell me about CeeCee?

“When did you get engaged?”

He looked away and I knew he wasn't seeing his office or me. “That weekend.”

So, yes, I called it right when I decided he was impetuous. And so was CeeCee.

“Do you know of any reason why anyone in the family would want her dead?” It was a bald, tough question.

His face hardened. “If I knew”—his voice was low and thick—“I'd have done something long before now.”

I stood, picked up my purse. “Thank you, Mr. Dugan, for your time.”

He said nothing until I was almost to the door.

“Mrs. Collins, are you going to Ahiahi?”

I looked back. His face was grim, all traces of warmth gone.

“Yes.”

“If what you suspect is true”—he spoke slowly, emphatically—” you will be in great danger.”

“I know.” I turned away. But as I closed his office door and hurried through the anteroom, I wondered if he was warning me…

Or threatening me.

I
reached the outskirts of Pottsboro. I doubted the main street—a straggle of small stores, a barbecue restaurant and several gas stations—had changed much in decades. And certainly not in the short span of years since the kidnapping.

I'd not found a phone listing for Johnnie Rodriguez. But I'd traced down an AP reporter in Dallas who had covered the kidnapping and learned that Rodriguez lived with his mother, Maria. I got her phone number and address. I debated calling. But I didn't want to frighten Johnnie. No, I wasn't going to take any chances. I was going to talk to him, whatever effort it took. And somehow, through threats or bribery or persuasion, I was going to find out what he told Richard.

I got directions at a gas station. Ten minutes later the rental car jolted to a stop at the end of a rutted, red dirt road in front of a small frame house.

There was no yard. Blackjack oaks crowded close to a
dusty path. I slammed the car door and the sound seemed overloud in the country quiet. Crows cawed. Far above, a Mississippi kite, its huge wings spread wide, rode a thermal draft.

Just for an instant I paused. Six years ago Richard heard the slam of a car door, felt a cool lake breeze, faced this empty path. It was as if he stood beside me, just for an instant. “Richard…”

Then a crow flapped past and the sense of Richard's presence was gone and I was left with a haunting feeling of unease. Richard walked this path and it led him to Kauai and his death.

I felt the faint warmth of the March sun and knew I did not want to die. Not now. Not yet. It's hard to be frightened. It's hard to find courage. “Richard…” I took a deep, ragged breath. I moved forward. Forced myself forward.

The house had a slovenly, unkempt air—paint peeling from the walls, untrimmed hydrangeas bulking up against the windows. A bicycle missing a front wheel lay on the sloping porch, along with a rusted bucket and an old car battery.

The sagging front steps creaked beneath my weight. Had this little frame house been so bedraggled, so forlorn when Richard came?

A thin, gray-striped cat bolted from behind a pile of firewood on the porch to block my way, hissing, ears flattened, tail puffed.

I heard a faint scrabbling sound and frightened meows.

“It's all right, little mother,” I said softly.

I stepped around the cat.

The door opened. Grudgingly, slowly, with a mournful creak, as if it were an unaccustomed act.

There was no screen.

I looked into eyes as dark as my own, at a face wrinkled by time, dark hair streaked with silver.

We were probably close in age. But I'd been lucky,
blessed with good health and excellent medical care. And she had not. Her skin had the waxen look of illness, pernicious and irreversible. Her arms had so little flesh, the bones protruded. Her blue cotton house dress hung in swaths.

She was staring at me, her eyes puzzled. “I thought you were the district nurse.”

“No. I'm Henrietta Collins. I know the Ericcson family.” That was not true. “I'm here to see Johnnie Rodriguez.” I tried hard to keep my voice even, undemanding, but I had traveled a long distance and all the way I kept thinking that if Richard had not come here, he might still be alive. And beneath my anger, fear pulsed. Yes, I was following in Richard's footsteps.

A claw-like hand moved to her throat. She opened her mouth, but no words came.

“Johnnie Rodriguez.” I would not be stopped. My voice was harsh now. I couldn't help it. “I must talk to him.”

Her head began to sway back and forth. “Oh, no. You can't, ma'am. You never can. Johnnie's dead. Dead and gone.”

 

We stood at the end of a rickety pier.

Gulls squalled. The sun glinted on the huge expanse of lake. A gusty south wind tatted lacy white swirls across the blue surface. A speed boat thrummed past. Water slapped against the pilings. The air smelled like fish and dust.

The shoreline boasted vacation homes ranging from trailers perched on concrete blocks to elegant multilevel retreats. I noticed the surroundings automatically, my mind cataloging, the beads slipping through my fingers even while I was struggling with shock. Johnnie Rodriguez dead! I'd come all this way. I'd counted so much on talking to him.

Maria Rodriguez pointed down at the roiled water. “That's where I found Johnnie.” Her face reminded me of a
Dorothea Lange photograph, misery and despair and mute acceptance etched in every crease and line.

“I'm sorry.” The words drifted between us like wisps from a cottonwood. Sorrow freighted the air. Her grief and mine. “What happened?”

Her skeletal arms folded tight across her body. “Johnnie drank too much.” She said it matter-of-factly. “The deputy said he must have fallen. He was too drunk to swim. So he drowned.”

A matter-of-fact tone, but a tear edged down her sallow, wrinkled cheek.

The wind rustled her skirt, stirred my hair.

I looked back at the small wooden house where Johnnie Rodriguez had lived his whole life, then glanced at the end of the pier. How drunk would you have to be? “I'm sorry,” I said again. “When did Johnnie drown?”

“Six years ago.”

It wasn't the wind skipping across the water that made me feel chilled. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my coat. My fingers clenched into fists. “And the date?”

“April sixth.”

Less than a week after Richard fell—was pushed—to his death.

If I'd had any misgivings about the truth of the poster, I could put them away.

She faced me. “Why did Miz Ericcson send you to talk to Johnnie?” She lifted a bony hand to shade her eyes from the sunlight.

I had the space of a breath to decide how to answer. It didn't even take that long. She'd made the jump, according me legitimacy because I said I knew the Ericcson family. That gave me a lot of room to maneuver.

Was I willing to play the lie? Of course.

But I phrased my answer carefully. “Johnnie was working for Belle Ericcson when her daughter was kidnapped. I'm
trying to put together the recollections of everyone who was at the house that weekend.”

She smoothed back a strand of lank hair. “Seems a funny thing to do. To want to remember the bad. Johnnie sure didn't like to talk about it. It upset him too much. And Miz Ericcson, they say she still grieves something awful. That's what I've heard. She's never come back, you know. She sold the lake house and the boat to a rich oilman from Amarillo. They say she went off to Hawaii and built a house up on a cliff and she's never come back to Dallas. Not once.” She turned her gaunt face toward me. “I thought Miz Ericcson knew Johnnie was gone. You've come a long way for nothing. There's nobody here who was at the lake house that weekend except me.”

“You were there?” I managed to ask in a casual, even tone.

“Yes'm.” Her voice was tired but obedient. This was a nice woman, a sick woman, but she wanted to be helpful. “I got the call that Thursday to open the house, mop and dust and put on fresh linens and stock the kitchen. That was when I was still working, before I got sick. I had a big list, getting everything ready for Miss CeeCee's birthday party. The party was going to be Saturday night even though it wasn't really her birthday until Sunday.”

Sunday that year was April 1. So April 1 was CeeCee's birthday. And the day that Richard would die one year later. No April Fool for the Ericcson family or for me. Not ever again.

I willed a pleasant expression on my face as I looked into dark, patient, sad eyes. “I understand CeeCee drove up from Dallas on Friday afternoon.” I'd done my homework, pulled up every scrap of coverage about the kidnapping.

Those thin arms slid to her side. The blue-veined fingers of one hand plucked at the ruffled pocket of her dress. “They
say she must have come then.” Her voice was low and indistinct.

“You didn't see her?” I moved a little nearer.

“No'm. I finished up about five and I wanted to get home and fix Johnnie's supper. Johnnie lived with me. All my other kids got families. But Johnnie never married. Maybe…” She sighed.

“You went home,” I said gently.

She looked up at a dazzling white house on the bluff. “I walked home. It's not even a mile if you go through the woods. Johnnie had the pickup. He'd been running errands all day, brought in fresh firewood and plenty of beer for the boat and he'd gone over to Pottsboro for barbecue. So, I left about five. And I locked up real good. I told them that.” She looked up again at the house on the bluff.

I spoke as if the facts were so familiar and they were. I knew them by heart now. “CeeCee stopped in town for gas. It was just getting dark.” The clerk remembered it clearly when she was interviewed by a television reporter. CeeCee paid for the gas and bought a bag of M&Ms.

“Josie Goetz was working at the station that night. She said Miss CeeCee seemed tired. She wasn't as cheerful and friendly as usual.”

A crow cawed, sharp and strident.

Maria shivered. “Mighty cold out here on the water. I've got some fresh coffee made…”

We walked slowly—it was an effort for her—back to the house. She brought me a white pottery mug filled with coffee as hot and black as molten tar. She settled into a rocker, then made a hopeless gesture at the dust-streaked floor. “I can't clean no more. I used to keep everything neat as a pin.”

Dingy crocheted doilies covered the arms of the easy chair and couch. Handmade wooden soldiers crowded the mantel, the windowsills, a pine bookcase, spots of color in the dim and dusty room.

She followed my gaze. “Johnnie made them. Pretty, aren't they?”

It was easy to see the same hand carved them all. Each blocky ten-inch-tall soldier stood on a two-inch base. The soldiers flaunted cockaded hats and brass-studded coats in vivid scarlet, cerulean, or tangerine.

Faintly, she began to hum “The March of the Toy Soldier,” her voice sweet and soft, and I knew where Johnnie had gotten his dream.

“Johnnie loved toy soldiers. From the time he was a little boy.” She picked up a Revolutionary War soldier with a musket. “He never learned to read real well, but all he needed was to see a picture. He spent all his free time carving. This was the last one he made. It was for Christmas.” She held it out to me.

I put down my coffee mug, took the carving. Gilded letters on the base read: TO MAMA. I handed the soldier back to her.

Her smile was full of love. She put the carving down gently. “Johnnie was a good boy.” The chair squeaked as she rocked. “And I know he never hurt Miss CeeCee.” She fastened mournful, puzzled eyes on me. “Maybe it was meant, you coming here to ask about Johnnie. I been thinking. If ever I was to tell anyone, now's the time.”

The moment stretched between us. I wanted to grab those thin shoulders, grip them tight, shake out the truth.

“Please tell me.” I spoke as a supplicant.

Our eyes met and held and we each knew the other had a troubled heart.

She sighed and it was as light as the flutter of wings. “I growed up telling the truth. My pa said an honest heart was a gift to God. And I've grieved ever since because I lied about the night Miss CeeCee was taken. Johnnie was so scared the next week when the call come that the deputy wanted to see him and ask where he was when Miss CeeCee disappeared.
Johnnie said I had to tell them he was home that Friday night, like he always was. He promised me he didn't know what had happened to Miss CeeCee, but he was scared he'd be in big trouble if it come out what they'd done. They'd thought it was all in fun, but it was a trick. But they could never prove it, couldn't prove anything. He swore to me he didn't know anything that would help the police find her. And that was all he'd say—ever. But I know he didn't do nothing bad. Not Johnnie. So I said I was here Friday night and Johnnie and me had supper and he was working on a soldier and didn't go nowhere. And Johnnie had been working on a soldier, the parts were all out on his table. The deputy believed me because he and Johnnie went to school together and he knew Johnnie'd never hurt nobody. And Johnnie, he got out and searched till he was so tired he was ready to drop and he kept saying Miss CeeCee had to be somewhere.”

Johnnie joined in the search. Yet, obviously he knew something of what happened on Friday evening. But if he searched, he must not have known where CeeCee Burke was. Or he searched to show he knew nothing.

I smoothed the doily on my chair arm. “So Johnnie said ‘they'd thought it was all in fun'? They?”

“Yes'm, he did.” Her tone was sharp.

Was this really what Johnnie had said? Or was this his mother's version to lessen Johnnie's involvement? Or had Johnnie lied to his mother?

They
? Johnnie and who? “Did he say who he was talking about?”

“No'm. He never said.” There was the faintest inflection on the last word.

“But you know?” I kept my voice undemanding, casual.

“Johnnie was working over there that day. It had to be that Mackey, that man who works for Miz Ericcson.” The bones in her face sharpened, and for an instant she had the predatory look of a bird of prey.

That was a familiar name to me. Lester Mackey was Belle's jack-of-all-trades. Mackey had served her and her several husbands as a houseman, chauffeur and general dogs-body since Belle's early days in Japan.

“That Mackey! I never did like him.” Maria Rodriguez's mouth folded in a stubborn, angry line.

“Why not?” I asked mildly.

Her eyes slid away from mine. “Whenever they come up from Dallas, he always had Johnnie hang around with him. And there was no call for it.” Her bony face was both angry and anguished.

“If he hired Johnnie to work around the place—”

“He'd keep Johnnie late. And what for?” she demanded. “Can't work after dark. But he'd invite Johnnie to his quarters, show him art books.” She stared down at the floor. “I didn't like it.”