Shadow Tag (The Ray Schiller Series - Book 2) (14 page)

“Thanks. According to several accounts, on the day of the election, Mr. Davis left the building visibly upset. We’ve heard you were the last person to speak with him there.”

“Was I?”

“That’s what we’ve been told. Can you tell us what was bothering him?”

Felton steepled his long, slender fingers under his chin. “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t aware of his having been troubled.”

“You’re saying he was fine when he left you?”

“Yes, quite fine, in fact. I’d just told him he’d been named the new president of ACC. If something happened to upset him, it must have occurred after he left the boardroom.”

“A 180-degree shift in mood. That’s odd. Any idea what could account for the sudden change?”

“I have no idea,” Felton said, shaking his head. “If it’s any help, I can tell you Paul’s emotional swing probably wasn’t as great as you seem to imagine. Basically, his election was a certainty. It had been so long in coming, the news was anticlimactic. There’s no telling what may have set him off. Paul could be quite volatile at times.”

“Did you know him well?”

“I think so,” Felton replied. “We didn’t socialize, but we worked with one another frequently over the years.”

“In your capacity as president of the board of directors?” Ray asked.

“Yes, plus Paul was on my board of directors here at Felton Plastics.”

Waverly cleared his throat. “From what we’ve seen of his financial records, you paid him very generously for that.”

“Yes, as I do every member. Some companies pay well; some pay nothing at all. Chet Stockton and I shared the conviction that financial reward and performance are directly related. My own salary as an ACC board member reflects that philosophy as well.”

“Finances don’t seem to have played a part in Davis’s death.”

“No, I’d be surprised if they had. But if you’re trying to make sense of his suicide, you don’t have far to look. He went through so much just prior to his death—Valerie’s murder—the ensuing investigation.” He paused, looking at each of them in turn. “He’d lost his wife in such a horrible way. Instead of sympathy, suspicion and accusations were leveled at him. The two of you put him through hell, gentlemen.”

“It was an investigation,” Ray said. “We did what we had to do.”

“I suppose that’s true. It’s just that Paul loved Valerie deeply, and I could sympathize with what he was going through.”

“Did he? Love her, I mean?” Ray asked.

Without hesitation, Felton answered, “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Were you aware that he’d had a number of extramarital affairs?”

Felton clasped his hands in his lap. “Paul didn’t discuss that part of his life with me, but I’d heard the rumors. To that extent, yes, I was aware of it, Detective Schiller.”

“But still you say Paul Davis loved his wife.”

“He may have been unfaithful, but that doesn’t mean he stopped loving Valerie.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t see the discrepancy?”

“As someone who has experienced that unfortunate situation, my perspective may be different from your own. My wife is a professional woman. Over the years, she became immersed in her own career. Eventually I began to feel excluded. Someone came along who made me feel needed again. Trite but true,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Despite that affair, I never stopped loving Joanna.”

Ray’s back straightened. “You’re saying your affair was your wife’s fault?”

Felton shrugged. “I’m saying that sometimes—”

“Excuse me,” Waverly interrupted. “We’ve gotten way off track here.” He redirected the course of the interview and found Felton’s answers taking them over well-worn ground, verifying that Mitchell Gaynor had discovered Davis’s body—that Paul had taken his own life—that the board’s failure to notify authorities immediately had been inexcusably stupid, but nothing more than a regrettable mistake.

Ray listened, inwardly grumbling,
Tell us something we haven’t heard already—something that will make sense of this.

Stuart Felton eventually showed them out, his rail-thin frame moving with a natural grace. “By the way,” he said at the door, “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but if you’re planning to speak to Mitchell Gaynor, he’s going to be away this weekend with his wife and son. I expect he’ll be gone until late Sunday.”

“Thanks.” Waverly said. “We appreciate the heads-up.”

“Time is money; I don’t like to see it wasted,” Felton said, “regardless whether it’s yours or mine.”

16

Waverly drove out of the Felton Plastics parking lot and turned onto North Washington Avenue. “Damn it, Ray, we got nothing. Well, at least Felton spared us a useless trip to see Gaynor. On Monday, maybe we can get something out of him we can sink our teeth into.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” Ray said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t shake the feeling we’re being stonewalled.”

“Same here.” Checking his rearview mirrors, Waverly changed lanes to get on First Avenue North. “Hey, you remember the movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Since I met Felton, I’ve been trying to figure out who he reminds me of. I finally got it. It’s the E.T. from that film…the guy with the badass robot. Remember?”

His hand on the dashboard, Ray braced himself for another ill-advised lane change. “I remember you nearly put us in another guy’s trunk a minute ago. Would you watch what you’re doing?”

“Yeah, yeah, relax. You know who I’m talking about, though, right?”

“You’re crazy. Felton doesn’t look anything like Keanu Reeves.”

“Oh, hell, no. I’m not talking about the damn remake. The original movie back in the fifties. Um … Rennie. Michael Rennie. That’s the guy’s name. Tall. Hollow cheeks. Slicked-back hair. Remember him?”

“Vaguely.”

“You see the resemblance?”

“I guess. Now can you get us back to the station in one piece?”

They’d hardly had time to sign in again when a familiar voice captured their attention.

“Toledo.”

“What?” Ray turned and saw Dennis Hoerr standing behind him. The meaning of the single word sank in. “Wait. Does Toledo have something to do with a link between that pearl-handled revolver and Michael and Franklin Johnson?”

Hoerr smiled. “Damn right.”

“You found something?”

“You better believe it.”

Waverly clapped Hoerr on the back with an enthusiasm that rocked the young detective forward three inches. “We hit pay dirt?”

“It sure looks that way. Michael Johnson may have been born in Milwaukee, but his Social Security card wasn’t issued until years later in Toledo, Ohio. Good thing getting a Social Security number at birth wasn’t a requirement back then, because it’s the location that put me on the right track.”

Waverly’s brown eyes gleamed. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

Hoerr began dragging the process out. “Sixty-two years ago,” he said, “Michael Arthur Johnson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Margaret Ann Johnson, nee Jankowski, and Wendell Charles Johnson II.”

“Okay,” Ray said, “so where does Franklin come in?”

“I’m getting to that.” Hoerr flipped a page in his notepad. “Now, Johnson’s father Wendell was a ‘junior’, so obviously his grandfather was also a ‘Wendell’, which still left me in the dark. That got me checking for siblings.”

“So Franklin was his brother?” Ray asked.

“Technically he had one, but he was stillborn; Johnson’s mother died in childbirth. When your suspect was seven, his father was killed in an industrial accident, leaving him an orphan.” Hoerr began the incessant rocking on the balls of his feet, grating on Ray’s already-raw nerves. “So,” he said, “with both parents dead, the only family Michael Johnson had left was his Aunt Loretta and Uncle—”

“Franklin,” Ray blurted out.

“His father’s brother,” Waverly chimed in. “Franklin Johnson was Michael Johnson’s paternal uncle, right?”

“Right,” Hoerr said.

“So,” Waverly surmised, “after little Mikey’s father died, Uncle Frank and his wife Loretta took in their nephew. I’ll be damned.” He patted Hoerr’s cheek. “Good job, kid.”

“Glad I could help.”

“Yeah, great job,” Ray said. “Thanks.”

Hoerr nodded. “Is there anything else you need done—anything I can help you with?”

“We’ll let you know if something comes up, Dennis,” Waverly said. “Thanks again.”

Ray watched the gleam go out of Dennis Hoerr’s eyes—saw the sag in his shoulders.

“Hey, Dennis…”

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine. See you guys later.”

17

Inside his dilapidated apartment, Michael Johnson opened a wallet nearly as old and worn as himself. The billfold compartment held three crisp Washingtons and one faded, dog-eared Jackson. He’d have to stretch the twenty-three dollars until payday; he’d done it before on a lot less. The scant funds would buy him a little time outside the dreary apartment—time in a place alive with laughter and conversation. Drinking at home was cheaper, but he always slept better after visiting Gilhooley’s.

He’d have found the bar even more to his liking if it hadn’t been for Steve, the young punk of a bartender with the wavy, dark hair, broad shoulders, and smart mouth. Standing in his bedroom, Johnson’s lips curled in a snarl as he mimicked him. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? Maybe you should have something to eat. You oughta go home and get some sleep.” Johnson spoke to the phantom bartender with a sneer. “And maybe you should stick it where the sun don’t shine, Stevie boy.”

Johnson’s wallet flopped open as he tossed it back on the dresser. He brushed a finger over the faded photo of his late wife, her eyes sea-blue, hair the color of corn silk. If only he could reach out and touch her cheek, feel its warmth and softness once more. His arthritic fingers glided over her image encased in the scratched, plastic photo holder. Gone was the gruffness and hard glint in his eyes.

“How did things ever get so messed up, Lucy?” He closed the wallet and headed for the kitchen where he threw a cabinet door open and grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam. “One shot,” he told himself. “Gotta spread it out.”

He poured the whiskey into a glass and let it flow down his throat like liquid fire. Tilting the bottle a second time, a small trickle splashed into the glass before he jerked the bottle upright. He couldn’t risk letting the liquor loosen his tongue like it had before. His mouthing off about Paul Davis at Gilhooley’s hadn’t been just stupid, he realized, it was dangerous.

There were plenty of other bars where he could take his business, but Gilhooley’s was his favorite. The place had been taken over by new management a couple months back. The new owner, Kurt W. Schwartz, spoke with an accent thick enough to stop a bullet. Still, the bar’s name remained unchanged as did the decor and the shamrock-crested cocktail napkins. Johnson figured the cheap bastard saved a bundle that way, not that it mattered. They could play “Oh, Danny Boy” on a glockenspiel and he wouldn’t care as long as Schwartz didn’t raise the price of the drinks.

Schwartz, however, couldn’t leave well enough alone; he’d turned the place into a bar and grill
joint. It was the enticement of food and the proximity to Allied Computer Corporation that turned Gilhooley’s into a popular lunchtime spot for the ACC crew. Johnson figured he’d established squatter’s rights. He wasn’t going to be forced out by the incessant talk about Paul Davis and the damn investigation, but he’d have to be a lot more careful to keep his thoughts to himself.

“Bar and grill,” he snorted. “Damn that Schwartz.”

The bottle beckoned, but he was distracted by a knock at the door. “What,” he shouted. The knocking grew louder, more persistent. “Who the hell is it?”

Three sharp raps followed.

Johnson hitched up his pants, opened the door and eyed Ray and Waverly up one side and down the other. “Might’ve known—Heckle and Jeckle. Now what do you two want?”

Ray glared at him. “The truth—same as before.”

“You already got it.”

“But not from you.” Ray followed him inside. “You denied owning a gun. You denied knowing Franklin Johnson. Didn’t your Uncle Frank teach you it’s not nice to lie?”

Johnson’s shoulders slumped.

Ray kept pushing. “That pearl-inlaid .38 came from him, right?”

“All right, yeah. It was my uncle’s gun.” He ran a hand over his stubbled face. “Fact of the matter is, I never denied none of that stuff you’re talkin’ about. You just don’t listen too good is all.”

“There’s an awfully thin line between evasion and lying,” Ray said.

Johnson crossed the room and sank into the nearest chair, his eyes hazy, the creases in his ashen face becoming fissures. “You two show up here asking all kinds of questions about Paul Davis, then Frank, and about my owning a gun. You think I’m some kind of idiot? You figure I don’t know when a bull’s-eye is getting stuck to my back?”